My Emotional Journey with my Parents - Awareness, Acceptance, Forgiveness

Awareness

When I wrote my book, something unexpected happened. In the process of putting my story into words, I began to see my parents differently. While I was able to understand my own issues and it allowed a release, it also allowed me to gain perspective. 

I started to understand — in the way you understand something you’ve lived through but never talked about — that they did the best they could with what they were given. They carried burdens I’ll never fully know, mental and emotional weights they rarely spoke about but which shaped every choice they made. They didn’t have the language for healing. They didn’t have the tools for open conversation. And yet, in their own way, they were surviving.

That realization softened me. It didn’t erase the pain, but it helped me hold it differently. My parents did what they could not of ill intent but of protection and love in their own way.

Acceptance

For years, I told myself I had accepted my parents as they were. That I could love them without liking them. That “meeting them where they are” was enough. But acceptance, I learned, is not a one-time act — it’s a posture you return to again and again, especially when old wounds resurface.

When I got married, something shifted. Suddenly, I wasn’t just their child — I was an adult they no longer had to “worry” about. It was a quiet reclassification, not a grand announcement. And I found myself letting go of certain expectations, and their judgement  loosened. The closeness I once wanted wasn’t going to come wrapped in perfect words or cinematic moments.

Acceptance was learning to release the hope for a different version of my parents, without abandoning the relationship entirely.

Forgiveness

I used to think forgiveness would be an event — the kind of moment where my parents would embrace me, tears in their eyes, and say all the words I had longed to hear. I tried that and it didn’t go like I was expected, and the feelings just festered sitting there.  

Forgiveness arrived quietly, without fanfare. Without even talking to my parents. It was a gradual loosening inside me, a slow decision not to keep carrying the same hurt into every interaction. My father had a stroke this year. My mother has become more forgetful. Every day, I am reminded that time is not infinite. Ten years from now, they will not be the same people they are today. And at their age, time doesn't heal, it slows them down.

So I’m learning that closure isn’t something they have to give me. It might never come from them. Some stories will remain unfinished, some questions unanswered. But that doesn’t mean I can’t lay them down.

Time is a currency we can never earn back. I think about how much of it I could lose if I kept holding on to old grievances. Will they matter at the end of our lives? Will the list of hurts be what I want to remember?

The truth is, I don’t need an apology to move forward. I can choose to live in the space that remains between us — imperfect, limited, and real. And maybe, in the quiet act of letting go, I give myself back more than I ever expected.