I want to share something that has been especially on my heart and mind lately. It is a very hard topic and I do not pretend for a second to have any wise answers or mind blowing insights. However, I do feel like my experience can offer some encouragement and validation to others in our community and that together we can move toward greater healing. This topic is on parental relationships and the hurt they have put us through. 

When my family fell apart on Easter 2009, my dad was revealed to me as the abusive parent: manipulative, verbally abusive and destructively angry. I guess I always knew ever since I was little and he yelled at me for crying and slammed a door in my face that he was not the rock I could count on, and I always went to my mom. And it is true, she was the parent who tried to have my best interest at heart and the one I went to with all my tears. After she died last year, my world imploded. I could not make sense of anything without her constant love and support; I am still far from ok. However, in the last month, I have started to have other feelings besides grief of her loss and an overwhelming ache to have her back. Honoring her and remembering everything wonderful about her suddenly got complicated as other feelings started to rise up: anger, hurt, and even a sense of betrayal. I did not want to feel these emotions. It was much more comfortable to sob for her loss as an amazing mother than to have flashbacks of times she shut me out, yelled, and said harsh things. At times I felt like her own pain of our broken family was more important to her than me and my feelings. I pushed the feelings away for some time and tried to put her back up on her pedestal of being the perfect parent. Even as I write this, I can feel my stomach tighten with a feeling of being somehow disloyal to her. 

Then the bottom fell out a couple weeks ago. I discovered some things that she had written…about me. And it was devastating. She was very sick at the time and had gone through a lot and the combination of her cancer and her trauma most likely affected her brain. Even so, finding out things that she had said and thought about me, that she had seen me as bad and selfish, was earth shattering. I never in a million years thought that my precious mom could think things like that about me. I was not able to eat or sleep much for days, lost my confidence, felt my old struggle of self harm coming back up in all its morbid temptation. Hurting myself looked really really attractive, as messed up as that sounds. Grief got far more complicated than I ever thought it could be and I felt like she had died all over again. What do you do when you realize you have put a parent up on a pedestal and that they are actually not perfect? How do you live with the knowledge that both parents were actually capable of deeply wounding you? I realized I was so focused on dad as the “bad” parent that I ignored and did not deal with the ways that mom missed the mark as well. And I know why. 

At age 15, I watched half of my family rip my mom to shreds with their words, verbal attacks and hate. I watched her wall up and shut out my two oldest sisters and most of her family out of her own pain. I knew that if I was not the perfect daughter I could be shut out too. I carried a burden with me for all these years to make sure she was perfect in my mind so I could be perfect to her. I had very few healthy boundaries with my mom. She cried her tears in my arms that her husband did not love her:  I was 17. She would not go to counseling. Instead she came to me with heavy details of my father’s  abuse of her that were crushing to me. For ten years I protected my mom, cared for her, loved her as best as I could…but that ought not to have been  my role. I was the daughter. The parent/child roles were reversed and it was crushing; crushing to feel responsible for her emotional and physical health. In her last horrible three months, my sister and I were literally trying to keep her alive day and night. When the realization of the hurt she had caused me came to light, I felt like I could not live with it and was very afraid as depression and self hate hit me with full force. How do you move past this? Everyone has their own answer to that loaded question. For me, I talked to my counselor, sobbed to the Lord in many bitter tears, talked to people I trusted and went to the cemetery to sob at mom’s grave.

And then…something happened. The Lord started opening my mind to new understanding and new tenderness of heart and I realized something. Yes my mom hurt me deeply as well as my dad and I need to continue to grieve that. But my mom was human. Both my parents were human. And the very fact that in spite of the deep pain and abuse that my mom went through for most of her life, she still tried…SHE TRIED. That is the difference. Unlike an experience with an abusive parent who is fully self centered, my mom tried to be a loving parent, she kept trying to treat me right, she kept trying to be a better version of herself. She tried. And that is all she could do, it is all I can do, that is all any of us can do: try. Just keep trying. With God’s grace and our own effort, we can only try. And part of that trying on my part is a need to forgive. I have to forgive her for her brokenness, have to forgive the hurt she and my dad both caused me. With God’s guidance and continual growth, I have to let go of the standards I put on them and accept that they were broken. Just like me. I know this won’t happen overnight, but I also know that healing will not be able to come to me if I grip onto the hurt. I have to let go, for my sake as well as theirs. Even though it does not make sense and will never be ok, I have to let go, and I have to keep trying. Just like my mom did.

Intercessory Prayer

St. Monica, patron of perseverance, pray for us.

About the Author 

Angela Winkeler is an adult child of divorce; her parents divorced when she was twenty-three. She loves animals and babies, and has been a nanny for many years. She also has a horse, four lively little parakeets, and a very lovable hamster. She runs her own Life Coaching business, ARose Coaching and is studying to become a licensed therapist and she desires to be a guiding, caring mentor to others who are hurting. Her business phone number is 618-882-0597 and business email is arosecoaching@gmail.com. Please reach out if you are in need of her services.

Reflection Questions for Small Groups or Individuals

1. How does Angela’s call to “keep trying,” just like her mom did, speak to you in your relationship with your mother and/or father?

2. Think about a time that you had to forgive someone who you could no longer have contact with. What are some steps you used to work through the forgiveness process?