LifeWise Counseling and Wellness, LLC

By: Stacy Hixon, MA, LPC-S, CCTP, FRTP

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about parents and how most of us do not get the parents we wanted or needed. If

you did, that is a rarity. That does not mean our parents did not try, or that they were bad people. It means we did not come with an instruction manual, and our parents showed up with their own unresolved pain, wounds, patterns, and limitations.

Because of that, it makes sense that they did not always know how to parent us in the way we needed. Most of us do not fully understand this until much later in life, and some parents may never understand it at all.

Parenting is hard. None of us truly know what we are doing. We try the best we can, but we still make mistakes. The world I grew up in was vastly different from the world my daughter grew up in. I did not always understand the issues she faced, and I did not always know how to manage them or help her through them.

I did many things differently than my own parents, but I still failed in ways that mattered. I still caused pain, mostly because I had not yet healed my own. Some days, I showed up as a thirty-something-year-old mother. Other days, I showed up as a wounded twelve-year-old. Still, I tried to love my daughter, protect her, and guide her better than I felt I had been loved, protected, and guided.

One of the most difficult parts of growing and healing has been learning to accept my parents for who they are, grieving the parents I did not get, and trying not to become defensive when my daughter shares how she was hurt by the things I did not do well. I think I have come a long way, and I also know I still have room to grow.

I know I did many things right with my daughter. She is an amazing woman and an incredible human being. I am deeply proud of her. I also know I did many things wrong, and she carried consequences from some of those mistakes. I feel guilt and sadness about that. I am also deeply thankful that she has been patient with me and has allowed me the opportunity to keep learning how to be her mom now. I am still far from a perfect mother, but I have learned to listen without immediately defending myself.

I have realized that my defensiveness came from the fear that I was not a good mother. It terrified me to think I could have hurt my daughter. But I did. Not intentionally, but as living, imperfect humans, we make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes hurt the people we love the most.

I tried, but I could not protect her from every danger in the world, and I have not fully made peace with that. I have learned to coexist with the things that still haunt me. I have tried to understand why certain things happened, and sometimes there is no clear reason other than the painful reality that some people choose to harm others.

I guess what I am trying to say is that many of us do not get the parents we wanted or needed, and it is okay to acknowledge and grieve that. We also do not always get the children we imagined, and it is okay to acknowledge and grieve that, too. I am sure my own parents have grieved parts of that as well.

It is okay to be human and recognize that we have trauma and that, sometimes, we cause pain from places in us that still need healing. This does not excuse harm, but it does help us understand it. Healing asks us to hold both truths: we can have been hurt, and we can also have hurt others. We can grieve what we did not receive, and we can take responsibility for what we did not know how to give.

To make a long story longer, I am thankful for my experience and for the parents I have, even though our relationship has been complex and painful. I am thankful because I love who I am, and I would not be who I am without them.

I am also incredibly thankful for my daughter and who she is. She is an amazing woman, and I have learned so much from her. In many ways, she has taught me more than she may ever know. I am deeply thankful for the relationship we are fostering now. It is not perfect, and it never will be, but the fact that she is still here, allowing me to learn and grow, is such a testimony to the woman she is.

Healing in families is rarely clean or simple. Sometimes, it looks like grief. Sometimes, it looks like accountability. Sometimes, it looks like learning to listen without defending, loving without controlling, and accepting that repair takes time.

And sometimes, it looks like being thankful for the imperfect people who shaped us, while still telling the truth about the pain.

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