A Letter to My Friends Who Can’t Forgive Their Parents
There’s a child in you that looks up to your parents and sees stability and safety. Because of their love you feel free to trust the world, to venture out, to risk love.
They are your nest until some Godzilla like monster comes stomping across your safe, settled love to whisk away one half of your safety.
And now the city is dark and without power.
You’re left with one broken parent while your family hemorrhages and everything from before that was safe and stable is gone.
It’s devastating.
And then, the half of your whole who was sent away has the audacity to rebuild. They replant, create a new nest with a partner they’ve said would love to meet you, would love to be part of your life, if you’ll have them.
But how?
All you can see through the haze of memory is this monster who wrecked your home and destroyed your safe, settled life. How could your parent dare to create “a life” with that creature?
Children are black boxes of information — excellent recorders and terrible interpreters.
Allow us to return then to the two people — pillars of safety and stability.
Look a little closer.
How strong were they?
Through the eyes of a child.
*blink*
Through the eyes of an adult.
Were they pillars of stone and strength?
Or were they cardboard fakes, like a movie set to look like something sturdier than what they really were? Somewhere in between?
In the retelling of childhood memories, can you see all the times in which resentment bubbled at the corners of family time together, or how one parent was often just out of reach, just at the edges, barely there?
And what of the monster who stomped in and stole the joy?
On a closer look — were they such a monster or are there flashes of humanity in them?
The monster seemed strong in some indomitable way. Perhaps that strength is the kind of real your parent longed to feel on the set of your family’s life. At a certain point, all adults must make the survival choice to grasp at what is real before what isn’t goes up in flames.
All this time, it serves the image we built up in a past fantasy to interpret the interloper as a monster. All narratives beg the question,
“Who benefits from this retelling?”
The answer, my dear, is the child in you.
Yet all children’s years are fleeting and at some point maturation beckons us to leave our childlike ways behind us.
We desire to return to the small, safe place where all was right with the world, yet such small spaces never keep. Even the people who were pillars for you changed and grew. Such growth led them in new directions but it was never to escape from you.
When we grow older we find the monsters under our beds were only shadows, and peaceful sleep is within our grasp if we would only surrender to the dark and the safety of home.
What if the one you’ve shunned as Godzilla, were a trick of the shadows? What if on the other side of this dark night is a new day — a new nest waiting to embrace you?
It was never about replacing what was. But it was always healing, growing, breaking into something new.
We can’t craft new stories without releasing the vice grip on what was.
As sweet as the days were when you were small, let the gift of time carry you into new pastures of growth. Tenderness awaits.
Send the text. Answer the email. Invite them to dinner.
Life is short and love is worth the risk.
Elaine Murray is a seasoned writer, compassionate soul, and student of the human experience. Elaine shares valuable reflections on navigating the delicate balance between love, understanding, and personal growth.
