Parents are being punished and cut off making mistakes. This is not new, but it seems to be happening more.
I would say most of the time Parents can say the wrong things with the right intention. They step in when they should step back.
We do this because our hearts are louder than our judgement.
Parents are afraid of losing their children, they are afraid of watching them get hurt. Fear makes even the most loving parent respond in ways they regret. How can one expect a child to understand that? How can angry kid ever really know that a Mother's heart will always move first before logic. This makes her human in every possible way. The messy parts come from a place that's trying to love and protect the best way she knows how.
One of the most important lessons you can ever learn is that your parents may never be who you wish they were. Years and countless hours are spent on replaying the past over and over in your mind. "I wish my Dad hadn't manipulated me". "I wish my Mom cared more about me." The problem is that wishing does nothing, it doesn't change them. It only keeps you stuck in the pain and past of what never was... This isn't about allowing for abuse or pretending their mistakes didn't hurt. It's about releasing the weight of constantly I wish and letting them be who they are. With acceptance comes peace. Learning to understand them and meeting them where they are and finding ways to heal instead of letting anger keep the distance alive and ever present in every conversation. Because once you understand your parents not as the perfect figures you once needed them to be, but as human beings with their own wounds, their own pains and their own limitations you see them differently. You can't pretend to acknowledge this but keep stoking the fires resentment of what should have been from your perspective. This is not true acceptance, and lasting peace will be elusive. You may see the cycles they never broke, the love that they might not have known how to give. The ways they tried but fell short and in that understanding it's like your heart starts to soften.
My friend was an estranged child. They helped me understand that it was safer for them to cut their parents off then stay in the conversation, but then they never healed. They stay stuck carrying unresolved anger and grief into every relationship. They explained to me that while they were in that state, every effort her parents made to reach out was ignored, dissected or used against them. She couldn't trust anything her parents did. So, any progress or movement towards maturity was never acknowledged. There was never a chance for them to correct or clarify the why they did or said certain things. So, time passed, their parents were moving on, but she was not. Until she realized that if she met her parents in the middle, realized they were actually trying to understand her and be supportive of her path, she was going to be stuck with permanent pain. She thought that reaching back into the past she could justify her anger and why she was estranged. She narrowly escaped a slippery trap.
She realized that her motivation of searching the past was to validate and justify her actions and personal choices
vs that of understanding her parents with empathy. She didn't want to take responsibility for her own choices. She felt like placing blame would be the answer.....it wasn't.
There is a story of a group of people that needed to stoke hate of their "parents" or forefathers for generations for moving them from their homeland to across the ocean to a new place. The homeland was conquered and destroyed. Some of the kids of this family felt like it was a blessing, others did not, so they clashed big time. The one's that were ok with it moved away and progressed. The ones that stayed couldn't bear the thought that the others could live in peace. How dare they? They decided to make a conscious choice to teach hate for generations and that it would be better to wipe them off the face of the earth then to just live peaceably apart. What an interesting problem, "if you don't agree with me, then I can't accept you." Can you see this in our society today?
Why can't an estranged kid live the way they want and still be happy for the parents to be who they are? Why would a kid decide to "save" all his siblings that still have great relationships with their parents by getting them to see how manipulative and wrong they were. Why isn't it possible for to be happy in their own sphere? Why not? What's the big deal? If you are truly that angry maybe it isn't about your parents after all.... What if you are just mad at yourself? What if you are the problem? Is that too hard to even consider?
We decided awhile back now that we aren't going to chase down a child who doesn't want us back,
who resents us, and doesn't respect us parents who did their best. We know that doesn't actually bring them back, that is not right. There is no "back". There is only support for their happiness going forward. But if they don't acknowledge that then any attempt is an irritant to their spirit. We aren't going to lose ourselves in that pursuit. It would be disrespectful to both us and the kid.
So, I ask you, what if the story shifts.... from "they failed to where they were carrying their own pain too".
That may not erase the pain, but it creates space for compassion
Sometimes that compassion is what opens the door to healing.
Can there be permanent healing....? I believe so and it doesn't have to be in a religious way. It can come from a simple decision. A choice. One first has to want to heal. They may not know how to reach that point. Because what if the people that love them the most could be part of that solution but are kept at arm's length from doing so? That would be the ultimate tragedy.
Parents, what are you doing to change? Are you mature enough to stop wasting time worrying about what you could have, should have done or hoping your kid "comes back" and find a way to make is safer for them to meet you in the middle?
Kids, what are you doing to change? Are you mature enough to stop wasting time, accept your parents for who they are as well as yourself and heal by finding a way to meet them in the middle?
