The Day I Stopped Blaming My Parents (And Started Seeing Them As Children Too)

I am a daughter of a father who couldn’t love me.
And I’m also a daughter of a little boy who grew up without a father himself.

I am a daughter of a mother who raised me like a friend.
And at the same time, a daughter of a young woman who lost both of her parents before she turned thirty.

I am a daughter of a mother who lived her entire life for me.
And a daughter of a girl who was never taught how to love herself.

If I wanted to — I could blame them for all the trauma in my life.
And honestly?
There were years when I did.

Because the story is easy to tell:
They didn’t give me what I needed.
They didn’t know how to show up.
They didn’t know how to love me in the ways I ached for.

But as time passed… something shifted.

I stopped seeing them as “parents who failed me”
and started seeing them as children who survived what they were given.
Children who inherited their own wounds.
Children who did their best with the emotional vocabulary they never received.

And that changed everything.

The Truth Nobody Wants to Admit

I haven’t seen my father since I was five.
I don’t hate him.
I don’t blame him.
I don’t carry anger anymore.

I see a boy who was never shown how to be a man.

And my mother — who tried to be everything —
I encourage her now to live her own life.
To separate from me emotionally.
To find her identity beyond motherhood.
Because she never got the chance to be a child either.

The older I get, the more I realize:
I didn’t truly get to be a child
because my parents never learned how to be adults.

And still…

I’m grateful.
Deeply, genuinely grateful.

Not because they were perfect —
but because they tried.

Not because they got it right —
but because they gave me the pieces they had.

Here’s the Part We Don’t Talk About

Blame feels powerful.
It gives you a villain. A reason. A story.

But blame doesn’t heal.
It poisons the one who carries it.

And if you’re not careful, that poison becomes identity.
It becomes the story you live in.
The story you pass down.

At some point, we all have to decide:

Do I keep repeating the pain I inherited?
Or do I stop here, breathe, and choose differently?

I choose differently.
Every day.
Every moment.

Not because it’s easy —
but because repeating the cycle is harder.

I choose to be grateful.
I choose to forgive.
I choose to see the humans behind the roles.
I choose to honor the good thatdidcome from them.

I choose to love the child in me
by recognizing the child in them.

Takeaway:

You don’t heal by rewriting the past.
You heal by rewriting your relationship to it.

You don’t heal by demanding the apologies you didn’t get.
You heal by choosing who you want to become.

Generational pain stops when someone has the courage to feel what everyone before them avoided.

And if you’re reading this…
maybe that someone is you.

If this kind of work speaks to you — if you’re ready to break patterns, regulate your nervous system, and lead from emotional clarity instead of inherited pain — we teach this inside The Academy of MotivAction®.

Connect with us! You don’t have to do this alone.