The Moment You Realize Your Parents Were Just People

"Is This Normal?"

It's the question that runs in the background of every parenting day. "Is this normal? Am I doing this right?" The honest answer is almost always yes — and here are the few specific signs that mean it isn't.

Here is the evidence-based, non-anxious view of this specific situation. What's typical. What's unusual. When to worry.

The Phone Call That Changes Everything

It happens differently for everyone. For some, it's in the hospital, holding your own newborn, when the magnitude of the love hits and you think — for the first time, truly, in your body rather than your mind: she felt this. My mother felt THIS. About me. For some, it's at 3am, rocking a screaming baby in the dark, when the exhaustion reaches a place your mother must have reached too, and you understand — not intellectually, not theoretically, but in your shaking arms and your burning eyes — what it cost her.

For some, it's the first time you yell. The first time YOUR mother's voice comes out of YOUR mouth — and you realize, with a shock that sits somewhere between horror and compassion: she didn't have this either. She didn't have the books, the scripts, the articles. She had whatever HER parents gave her. And she was doing her best with that.

And then you call her. Or you don't call her — because the relationship is complicated, or broken, or she's gone. But the understanding arrives regardless: my parents were not gods who chose to hurt me. They were not villains who failed on purpose. They were exhausted people doing a 5-person job with 1-2 people, running scripts they inherited from THEIR parents, operating with less information, less support, and less awareness than I have — and they were, in their own imperfect and sometimes damaging way, trying.

The Two Truths That Coexist

This is the hardest part: both things are true simultaneously. Your parents hurt you. AND they were doing their best. The yelling was real damage. AND it came from a person who was depleted beyond capacity. The absence was a real wound. AND it was caused by a system that didn't support them any more than it supports you. The coldness was genuinely harmful. AND it was the only response available to a person running the script their OWN parents installed, without the awareness or tools to override it.

The culture wants you to pick one. Either they were bad parents (villain narrative) or they did their best (redemption narrative). The truth is both: they did real damage AND they were real people doing what they could with what they had. Holding both truths simultaneously — without collapsing into either excuse or condemnation — is the emotional maturity that parenthood forces on you. Because you see, from the inside now, how easy it is to be the parent you swore you'd never be. How the yell comes from a place you didn't choose. How the 10-second window closes before you can catch it. How the script loads automatically. And you think: my God. They were standing exactly where I'm standing. And they didn't even have the window.

The Forgiveness That Arrives (Uninvited)

You don't decide to forgive your parents. The forgiveness arrives — uninvited, unexpected, often unwelcome — in the moments when your own parenting mirrors theirs. The first time you lose your temper and see your child's face and think: that's the face I made when she yelled at me. The first time you're too exhausted to be present and realize: that's what she felt when she checked out. The first time you understand — not forgive, understand — that the person who hurt you was running the same intergenerational script you're running now.

The forgiveness is not absolution. It doesn't erase the hurt. It doesn't require reconciliation. It doesn't mean what happened was okay. It means: I understand the mechanism now. I see the wiring. I see how a person who loved their child could still damage their child — because I am that person, and I am capable of that same damage, and the only thing standing between me and the same outcome is awareness that they didn't have.

That awareness — the awareness you have that they didn't — is the difference. Not your character. Not your love (theirs was real too). Your awareness. The books you've read. The articles you've found at midnight. The cycle-breaking intention you carry. The 10-second pause you're practicing. They didn't have these tools. You do. And the difference between your childhood and your child's childhood is not that you love more. It's that you know more.

The Grief That Arrives With the Forgiveness

Hand in hand with the forgiveness comes a grief that nobody warns you about: the grief of seeing what you didn't get. When you hold your baby with tenderness and think my mother held me like this — and then: did she? I don't actually know. I don't have that memory. When you repair after a yell and think nobody repaired with me. The yell just... happened. And then we moved on. And I carried it alone. When you do the bedtime question with your child and realize: nobody asked me about the hardest part of my day. I processed it alone. I was 6 and I processed it alone.

The grief is for the child you were — the one who deserved the responsiveness you're giving your child and didn't receive it. The grief is real and it deserves space. Not at the expense of the forgiveness — alongside it. They did their best AND I deserved better AND I'm giving my child what I didn't get AND the gap between what I received and what I'm giving is both my deepest wound and my greatest achievement. All of this can be true at once. All of this IS true at once.

What to Do With the Understanding

Call, if you can. Not to accuse. Not to confront. To connect — from the place of understanding rather than the place of verdict. "I understand now. I get why it was hard. I see what you were carrying." This conversation — offered from one parent to another across the generational divide — is sometimes the most healing conversation available. Not always. Some parents can receive it. Some can't. Some relationships are too damaged for the call to be safe. Trust your judgment on whether the call is possible — and if it's not, the understanding can exist without being spoken.

Grieve, if you need to. The grief for the childhood you didn't have is not self-pity. It's acknowledgment — the honest recognition that something was missing and that the missing was real. The child you were deserves that acknowledgment. She waited a long time for someone to say: you deserved more. And the fact that you didn't get it wasn't your fault.

Keep going. The understanding of your parents doesn't change the work. The cycle still needs breaking. The 10-second window still needs catching. The repairs still need making. The new pattern still needs building. But the understanding changes the feeling of the work — from "I'm fixing what they broke" (angry, resentful, exhausting) to "I'm building what they couldn't" (compassionate, generative, sustainable). The work is the same. The fuel is different. And the compassionate fuel lasts longer.

Tip: If this article opened something — if the grief or the forgiveness or the understanding hit a place you weren't expecting — give it room. Not tonight, at 10pm, while the children sleep and the to-do list waits. Give it room in daylight, with a therapist, with a trusted person, or with Mio at 2am when the house is quiet and the feelings are loud. The understanding is a door. What's behind it is the most important work of your life — not as a parent, but as the child you were, finally being seen. 🦉

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