Forgive Your Parents, Free Yourself From A Life Of Resentment

After holding family grudges for over 15 years, I talk about how I was able to let go and restore peace in my life, and offer proven advice on how you can do the same.

Let’s face it. No one’s family is perfect

In fact, almost every family has a few crazies, some sort of drama, and its fair share of mistakes and problems

These mistakes can have more of an impact on our upbringing than most people realize. They even sometimes get past our own radar system, and we don’t recognize them as the initial creators of the imbalances that we’ve been carrying for years

However there is a silver lining

Once we see the truth of what’s really going on, we can not only heal these imbalances, but also practice compassion and forgive the people who made these mistakes and caused us harm initially.

More often than not, our parents are the main people in our lives who have the most impact on us.

They are also bound to make a good amount of mistakes during our upbringing.

Some of these mistakes are direct decisions they made for us during parenting

Others come from issues within themselves that they ignored or couldn’t resolve

What happens when they don’t resolve their own issues?

Those imbalances, traumas, and energy get passed down to us

In this post I’m going to share how I recognized these patterns and was able to heal and let go of it all to create peace between myself and my family.

My hope is that through my story, I’ll be able to help guide you to do the same.

Growing up, it shouldn’t be a surprise that my family had its share of crazies on both sides

One side was a bunch of addicts, none of which ever admitted they had a problem.

The other side was VERY loud and unleashed a lot of abusive behavior, both verbal and physical. This side also didn’t acknowledge that they had a problem.

In fact, neither side ever took responsibility or were held accountable for anything they did.

My immediate family is made up of my mom, dad, and younger brother. My father later told me that the reason why we grew up in a small town, away from our extended family was so they could raise us in a calm environment without “all that noise” around. I really appreciated this gesture and still compliment him for putting his kids first.

Growing up, we often saw examples of our extended family screwing things up around us , either from addiction, or abusive behavior that led to self-sabotage.

The surprising thing?

We never saw any of that in our own household. My parents barely drank, never did drugs or took medications, and only got into 1-2 fights per year that were light and short lived.

A picture was starting to be painted that we were the perfect family.

After my brother and I became teenagers, My parents started talking negatively about our neighbors and other families that were close to us.

Those families were frowned upon, and their mistakes became public knowledge. My parents also told us that they never made those same mistakes, which put them on a pedestal compared to the other parents they talked poorly about in our town.

The thing is:

We never turned the focus onto our own family, and never discussed any feelings or issues that were going on under our own roof.

In fact, family discussions were rarely had and any faults committed by my parents were rarely acknowledged. Our family just moved on as if they had never taken place.

Since discussions never happened, we had no choice but to believe that our family was near perfect and much better than all the other families around us.

One day, the Pleasantville narrative that I shrouded my family with was shattered. I came home to my “perfect” household after a night at work, only to receive the shocking news from my brother that my parents were getting a divorce.

We were both completely blindsided with this info because there was no past evidence that could have warned us that anything of this magnitude was possible.

At this point we were teenagers and what followed were some of the first conversations we ever had as a family. I witnessed my parents verbally attacking each other for the first time. The underlying truth had been kept from us for so long and was now exploding all at once

What came next was a whole lot of coping for my brother and I—arguably we’re both still not completely over it. However, going through the fire ourselves has led to some pretty clear realizations of mistakes that were made by our parents and that’s what I want the meat of this post to be about.

No doubt I’ve talked to a lot of my peers about this topic and every one of them has shared that their parents also made mistakes during their childhood. Some of these mistakes were minor—others were catastrophic.

In the past, I’ve tried talking with my parents about areas where I feel they went wrong and instead of being willing to look at that moment in time, they became very defensive about it.

Ultimately, they would not admit that a mistake was made. This led to me feeling that I was wrong to feel this way and say something in the first place. I also felt unseen by them in that area. It was a double edged sword that continued to inflict pain for many years.

After years of giving every ounce of my energy and intellect in attempt to explain myself to them. I was forced to accept that this was just not going to happen. They just were not going to admit their faults.

Have you noticed similar behaviors withing your own family?

I remember a conversation I had with my mother a few years back where I shared that my brother and I had gone through a lot of trauma after the divorce. I remember her looking at me in complete disbelief, as if an event like that would have no impact on her children whatsoever.

I remember at this point in the conversation a flashback happened in my mind

I was brought back 15 years to our family talks during my parent’s separation where my mom was arguing with my father in front of her kids about her own happiness, but never mentioned the importance of doing what was best for us. It just wasn’t on her radar then.

After years of reflection and keeping an open mind, I came to accept the following:

Your parents don’t need to apologize or admit they were wrong for you to forgive them, although it is very common to think this is needed.

I’d like to talk about some things I learned from reflecting on this whole experience, in hopes that it may help others who are struggling with this.

But first.

Why did I want to convince my parents to admit their mistakes so badly?

I wanted them to realize that:

• Their actions have consequences, even if they don’t believe they do

• A child’s opinion matters, it shouldn’t be silenced just because they’re young and assumed to have less intelligence

• Just because parents are not aware of the consequences from their choices, does not mean it doesn’t have long-lasting impressions on their child’s future

• No parent is perfect, but being willing to have discussions, learn, and admit mistakes is crucial to building a strong family unit.

I don’t expect any parents to be perfect, in fact, I know that none are. Mistakes will be made. But being willing to hear your kids out and address those mistakes can greatly improve the future relationship with your family.

Over the last 20 years, I’ve held grudges against my parents for the decisions they made and the information they withheld from us. For the longest time, I wasn’t able to set these emotions aside and ask myself why I felt this way in the first place. Now that I’ve been able to do that, I’d like to share my reasons with you

Let’s talk about how most children view their parents growing up.

They view them as the most important people around them. They are role models, heroes, and can do no wrong. They are the people we are usually around the most, and provide a lot of crucial needs for us while simultaneously teaching us valuable skills to make it in the world.

Growing up this was my truth as well.

As most do, I admired my parents and viewed them as near perfect people. After all, they were the ones who taught me the beginning of everything I learned and I had built up a level of unbreakable trust in them to be able to guide me in any situation. I thought they were the best cooks on the planet, that they knew everything and understood what was going on in the world—whatever they said, I believed without question. After all, why would they intentionally steer me wrong or provide me with false information?

In order for us to get behind the idea of forgiving our parents for certain mistakes that hurt us, we need to first humanize them by realizing that they are really no different from anyone else on the planet.

Even though I have been able to finally forgive my parents, I had to make just about every other choice in the book first and watch it fail before finally settling on this option.

My hope is to make this process a lot shorter for you.

What was the kicker that propelled me to forgiveness?

I realized that:

I do not have to forgive my parents only when they do things my way and meet my expectations—I can forgive them in order to have peace within myself and stop carrying this heavy load.

It turned out to be a form of self-love that I felt greatly.

I want to now share with you some of the angles that have helped me have compassion and empathy for my parents. My hope is that you’ll view these with an open mind and that it may help lead you to the same result no matter how deep the gravity of the situation is for you

1) Parents are people too, with their own uncertainties and limitations

What do I mean by this? We tend to put our parents / guardians up on a pedestal and this is completely normal. After all, we probably spent more time with them than anyone else growing up, and learned the majority of our first lessons from them. It’s easy to get caught up in the facade of expecting our parents to be perfect beings who can do no wrong, except, they’re human and they have faults just like we do now as adults. After all, it’s their first go-around at life and despite being older, they still have to trial and error their way through life like the rest of us. It’s only fair that we recognize they have their own internal struggles, generational trauma to work through, and must also adapt to whichever way the world turns as we progress through the years.

My next point comes from talking to a variety of different families over the last 10 years

2) Parents have good intentions at the core, but are thrown off balance by their own challenges and demons

I’ve never met a parent who deliberately wished harm on their child. The one’s who caused pain like this on their families were usually very mentally disturbed from their own traumas which took place during their own childhood or adulthood.

As an adult behavior specialist now, I’ve observed that Most parents deny having issues in the first place, or choose to ignore them and numb themselves in some way to get by. The consequence for that is the harmful behavior that we see bleed through their personality. The greater their issues are, the more unacceptable their behavior is

The problem with pain numbing is that it temporarily changes your personality to something that isn’t the real you. Even though it may seem like your issues have been resolved, when that drug of choice wears off, you’re back where you started and that discomfort still remains, returning you to that unpleasant state once more.

Failure to be able to deal with these problems on their own has caused their issues to worsen over time and they usually end up taking their frustrations out on their children and others around them. What’s really going on here is they’re mad and ashamed of themselves for not being able to work through their own problems.

Everyone wants to heal in a way, but not everyone is willing to go through the steps to achieve it

3) Most parents are beginners with little to no experience in this area. They are learning as they go. Mistakes are common.

Let’s keep in mind here that when a person decides to become a parent, they have no prior experience on what that is like. All they really have are examples from when their parents raised them—which is usually filled with mistakes and trial and error approaches that most likely need refining.

Once we realize that this massive “job” of being a parent requires trial and error, as well as time to get good at it, we can open our minds up to have a lot more compassion for our parents.

The key to being a good parent lies in how quickly they can acknowledge and rebound from their mistakes. It’s amazing what wonders communication within the family unit does here.

4) Parents are typically doing their best with what they know.

I once heard this woman talking about her parents on a podcast. She said that 30 years ago, the only resources that her parents had on effective parenting were a few books from the local library.

It made me think how much the world has changed now with the internet, online courses, and local parenting courses that are available to just about everyone.

Not to mention being able to google answers, read forums, or even ask an AI assistant questions about parenting.

The point is:

It’s so much easier for parents nowadays to learn about effective parenting, instead of just having to resort to a few books and asking their parents for tips (not as ideal as you might think)

When I thought about this, it helped me have a lot more compassion for my parents because they didn’t have access to the internet while I was growing up.

In fact, there were a lot less discussions going around as well about effective parenting. Back then it was more of a “just do it” philosophy where everything was expected to work out.

The millennial generation really is one of the first generations with a plethora of resources available to them on how to be effective parents. It’s not a complete solution and mistakes will still be made—but those mistakes will be a lot less if they choose to use this gift of technology to their advantage.

5) Your life is about your own experience and you deserve to feel peace

When in a conflict, most us are waiting for someone else to do or say something that will give us permission to let go and move on from suffering.

But what happens when that person either refuses to meet your demands, or simply is not emotionally intelligent enough to meet them?

Should you continue to suffer in hopes that they will figure it out someday and fix where they went wrong?

From my personal experience, the odds of this happening are usually very slim, and you could find yourself waiting years or even decades in hopes that they will come around.

There was a time where two of my aunts didn’t speak to each other for 15 years because they got into a fight over who got to keep their mother’s jewelry when she passed.

The point here is..

No matter how much harm a situation has caused you, is it actually worth the suffering of waiting and hoping that things will eventually be made right?

You can’t control another person’s actions but you do have at least some control over your own

Realizing this has helped me let go of my ego during times like these and ask myself the question

In the past, I realized that I would hold grudges not to deliberately cause myself pain, but in hopes that the other person would recognize how important the issue was to me and how much they had wronged me

The truth is:

More often than not, that other person isn’t going to willingly apologize and they are unaware of the pain and suffering you are going through by holding that grudge. So essentially you are causing all this pain and harm on yourself, and it isn’t making a huge difference with the situation as a whole.

So what can you do about it then?

Recognize that if this person has a history of wronging you with behavior like this, that you have the power to set up certain boundaries, or even go as far as to disconnect yourself from them entirely.

No relationship or connection is worth the constant disruption of your peace

Keep in mind this may not end with you “getting what you want” in hopes that the other person will realize their mistake and apologize, but it will allow you to move on and continue to build a stronger network with people who lift you up and support you.

Why consider forgiving those who have wronged you?

Because you deserve a peaceful life free from grudges and self-harm.

Don’t do it for them. Do it for yourself.