‘Well, if my parents didn’t do this, I wouldn’t have this issue today.’ No growth comes from that mindset.’: Woman on healing journey urges others to give parents grace after losing mom

“What if your parents were EXACTLY who they needed to be to shape you to who you are today?

Losing a parent brings up so many emotions: sadness, anger, love, regret – every emotion possible.

Over the years so many of you have reached out to me about your families and your relationships with your parents. More times than not there’s a lot of heaviness around it.

It’s especially more complex when you have a family of your own because now it’s your chance to parent and a lot of us are changing the narrative in that aspect so our kids don’t carry what we do.

Here’s the thing though – and it’s taken me a LONG time to get here – we all have flaws, we all have good traits and not so good traits. We all have ways we act we wouldn’t want others to see. We all have regrets for actions and we all truly I believe are doing the best we can with the tools we have, right?

It’s easy to get in the mindset of, ‘Well, if my parents didn’t do this, I wouldn’t have this issue today.’ No growth comes from that. You’re justifying staying stuck.

What if their flaws, and the hard times you went through, were EXACTLY what you needed to change, to have the fire inside you to not act the same way and to not carry that into your own family now?

I truly do not believe any of our parents set out to ever cause harm to us. I truly believe they were doing the best they could with the skills they had. I have SO many good traits from each of my parents, and yes, I wish a lot of hard times hadn’t happened because it hurt, but it hurt me enough to say, ‘I will not do this to my kids’ and pushed me in a way I could have never been pushed without living through it.

My parents gave me so much, they taught me how to love, be kind, accept others, and work hard. And while yes, I wish they had magically been healed from all the trauma in their life that spilled over into our lives, it’s not realistic and it’s quite frankly insanely rude of me to expect that.

If I can step back and just give some grace (which we all need), then I can have empathy for their inner pains. Just like I pray my kids have grace when I am less than stellar. When I thank my hard times for the lessons, everything changes.”

This story was submitted to Love What Matters by Allie Darr of Chattanooga, TN and originally appeared here. You can follow her journey on Instagram. Submit your own story here, and be sure to subscribe to our free email newsletter for our best stories, and YouTube  for our best videos.

Read more from Allie here:

‘Your results are ready.’ I clicked the email, braced myself for it to say ‘boy.’ PINK confetti lit up the screen.’: Woman welcomes first daughter after 5 sons, 3 miscarriages

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