What is one mistake your parents made that you struggle to forgive?

Yikes, yes.

Great question and interesting discussion!

Like panzade, I don't think I really have anything to forgive my parents for.

I joined the conversation because I too grew up behind the "bad" sister. I guess she wasn't so much "bad" but was (and still is) insanely narcissitic and attention seeking, a true drama queen. The difference is -- I loved being in that position. I was completely under the radar. I could do what I wanted and go where I wanted and see who I wanted without any interference.

Without doubt, this position shaped my personality but only in good ways, I think.

It's kind of funny....I got to play both good and bad roles.


I was definitely the bad kid in relation to my sister (who was a true delight, and didn't take advantage of being the good kid at all...she tried hard to protect me)....but the good kid in relation to my half-brother....who was kind of like your older sister, Msolga.


Life is extremely odd.

You do mention a good point - I'm sure every parent has a whole slew of items that they forgive their children for ...

My mother was a very good person. But, for whatever reasons, she did not involve me in the give and take that is essential to developement as a societal animal, as opposed to the child raised with wolves. I was, simply, there, the way the pet cat is there. Her own mother died when she was but three. During the Depression, they followed the crops, living in temporary camps, working sunup to sundown - I doubt she got what I missed herself. I don't blame her for any of it. She did what she knew how to do. That there was no touching, no conversations, and she was quick with a switch - It's water under the bridge. But I had no defense when she married my stepfather, and she fell into a trap with him. It happened so gradually that she did not see it coming that he intimidated her into submission on all fronts. My stepfather was abusive to the whole family, to the point that I will not ever forgive one thing about him. I at one time intended to go after him to do mayhem, but he had a stroke that paralyzed him before I reached that point. Now he is in the ground, where he belongs.

My mother stayed with a man who beat her, did drugs, squandered money, and generally made our lives a living hell. At one point when I was 12 years old, she went back to him after 6 months away...what she told me crushed me...they were going to get married! UGH!

I have struggled in my own life with men who treated me badly because I did not see that the behavior they were exhibiting was 'not normal' I sure wish she had given herself and me the opportunity to know a true loving relationship.

as my younger brother told me some 20 years ago, I will never marry and have a family, I could not bear to become the parent our father was"

It is difficult for me to believe that some of you honestly don't struggle to forgive your parents for anything. No matter how good parents are, they all make mistakes. And forgiveness is a very, very difficult thing at best. I wonder about people who say they have forgiven everyone. I tend to think they've just swept old issues under the rug. (Who knows, maybe that's where they belong.)

As for me, I'd name two things. One, my parents never told me they were proud of me. They may have been, in their own way, but they never said it. We talked about practically everything, even as adults. I made it through some truly awful, difficult things as a young adult and came out with my self-respect intact. I thought I deserved to hear an acknowledgment of that from them.

Two, my father's suicide. He was ill, and I'd be among the first to insist that we should all have the right to make that decision when our time comes. But he was also depressed and too prideful to admit it or deal with it. The end result was that he dumped a lot of his garbage on us to deal with. It took our family years to sort through the emotional and psychological mess he left behind. I'm not sure we'll ever recover from some of it.

I suddenly have a huge craving for some chocolate....

Very little danger of that ever happening, Dys. You've spent so many years helping children. The fact is, you've been a very good parent to many, whether there were blood ties or not. And we love you for it. (among other things...)

I wonder what your definition of forgiveness is. Mine is that it doesn't bother me and doesn't significantly color my current interactions. That doesn't mean it's forgotten. My father will occasionally try to rewrite history in our conversations and I will state my disagreement and then we move on to politics or whatever. I don't go around blaming my father for my shortcomings and I'm proud of his current accomplishments as I know he is proud of mine. Is that enough to be forgiveness? If someone has successfully "swept old issues under the rug", that might be another version of forgiveness.

My parents disowned me when they discovered I had left the Catholic church and joined the Methodist Church. They did not speak to me, or acknowledge my existence, for more than three years.

That is incomprehensible and underlines my disdain for the Catholic church.

Mags, THAT is something I would have a hard time forgiving my parents for

disowning is very tough to forgive.

can't do it myself.

Mine's weird, because the biggest qualm I have with my parents pre-dates and would preclude my existence. Basically, they joined a very destructive cult, but I was born as a result of this. If either of them hadn't joined I wouldn't exist. Makes it hard to blame them, I am the result of their worst decisions.

So the things I dislike about how I was raised all have to do with the cult's practices. I am upset that we weren't properly educated, I am upset that we were not socialized at all, I am upset that I was actively discouraged from pursuing things that were not religious (e.g. when I started writing stories they'd be tossed out if they were "worldly" or not "spiritual" in nature. Secular literature was taken from me and burned), I am upset that a high degree of abuse occurred in the cult and how scarred many of my peers will always be as a result. I am upset that they believed the part of the Bible that says that their religion is more important than family, and that while they were torn apart by being forced to break their family they couldn't bring themselves to supersede their closely-held beliefs. I am upset that they had too many children, that I was taking care of kids when I was a kid myself (some of my earliest memories are learning how to make a baby's bottle, how to clean the potty and how to clean and cook).

And another thing that makes it weird (which I'm really using to describe conflicted) is that some of the hardest things for me to get past were things I'd not trade for anything in the world. That they let the cult kick me out as a kid, and suddenly dropped me off in a country I had no experience with was rough in ways I can't begin to describe to people who never lived in such a weird cocoon. I was absolutely terrified. But it was ultimately better for me than staying in the cult till I could leave on my own. It gave me the opportunity to get past that inevitable culture shock a bit earlier, and while that made it a lot tougher than doing it as an adult I got to save some time getting it out of the way before some of my peers did. When they did it the second time (I was dropped off in the US twice with strangers) it was still pretty rough. But it was what I wanted that time. I wanted to get back to the US and try to keep going to school. They wanted to be crazy missionaries. So I told them to drop me off again and I'll figure it out. That was my choice, I could have lived with them, and forced my whole family to have a rough life (basically the cult didn't allow any "outsiders" so my whole family was kicked out when I came back and was having a very rough time surviving as a result) but I wanted to go back to the US, and was willing to put up with what happened.

What happened was rough, I became homeless in a way that was pretty scary (was given 15 minutes to pack my things and was kicked out) and I didn't do too well for a long time. But this was my own choice at this point. Ultimately my parents were in a crazy cult and my choice was to make them live a life they couldn't handle outside the cult (which they were about as ill-prepared for as me) or for me to live a life I couldn't handle (in the cult that I did not believe in). I chose neither and it was just going to be rough till I got stable on my own.

Being kicked out of every place I lived from 13 to 18 was pretty rough on me. I remember how ecstatic I was when I finally was renting my own place to live that nobody could ever kick me out of. And yes, if my parents weren't crazy religious folk then a lot of my life would have been a lot less tough. But a lot of people have it far worse, and my parents were also very loving, and truly believed in the nonsense that caused them to do the things they did. I forgive them in that I'm not angry at them for anything that happened to me, but I can't be close to them and don't really talk to them. I have a lot of brothers and sisters still in the cult, and now it's almost too late for my parents to turn their lives around and it bothers me enough to think about it that I try my best not to and have become very distant from that part of my family as a result. I don't really blame them, and consequently can't really "forgive" them but I also can't reconcile their world view with mine enough to even be in much contact with them.

At first I resented you doubting me, but then I realized that you were trying to comprehend how this could be.

My parents dreamed great dreams for me
but then let me chase the dreams I had for myself
and loved me just the same.

In other words, their unconditional love buoyed me through the storms of life.

I've always felt that those experiences are what make you so unique...the little I know about your childhood

Wonderful!

My father was a boozer and our homelife was chaotic and often violent. He picked fights and loved nothing more than goading my brothers into fighting one another, just to torment my mother. He had an evil and nasty streak a mile wide. I guess you could say that I forgave him long ago but, it feels more like I merely accepted it and moved on because I loved that mean ************ dearly from the beginning until the end.

wonderful way of describing your love eoe...if it's not too personal, how did your father affect your choice of a "significant other"?

I also wanted to add that some of these stories are very touching, thought-provoking and familiar, as we've discussed many of them on different threads in the past. I can remember Eva and I laughing about our fathers"in all of their messed-up glory" a few years ago