grief, living with grief, mother, parent, uncategorized

Forgiving Yourself For Choices You Made Before Your Parent Died.

Are you still beating yourself up over things you said or did when your parent who died was alive? You can’t take back those words. You can’t undo what you did. Maybe you remember the hurt, disappointed, or surprised look on their face. These negative memories can make your grief feel even worse. It’s time to forgive yourself for the hurtful things you said and the wrong choices you made when your parent was alive.

You might be mentally listing the things you should’ve said instead. You know you weren’t as kind as you might have been.

How long have you been keeping track, looking back, and tallying every transgression you made?

How long is that list you hold against yourself?

In life, we can usually find it fairly easy to forgive, especially the small stuff. We forget it happened. Life goes on. New days dawn.

But after a death, we no longer get those new days. The past becomes instantly precious. We analyze and pick apart the times we went wrong. Since we know we won’t get any new days, that we don’t get another chance to try again, now even the small things hurt big.

A small fault or argument or hurtful statement, so easily waived away in life, takes on new weight after death. A long list of small hurts can seriously weigh us down and prevent us from healing and moving forward in our lives.

Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. Think about a time that your parent said something that bothered or hurt you when they were alive. How do you feel about that now?

Does it still hurt deeply? Are you angry at them or have you already forgiven them and moved on?

Did you move on a long time ago? Was it easy?

When we truly love someone, these tiny hurts are often so easily forgiven. I’m sure my mother said plenty of things that got under my skin in my teenage years, in my twenties, and beyond. I’m certain she annoyed me when I planned my wedding or birthed my babies and raised them differently than she raised me. But if I think deeply about it, I can’t come up with a list of things my mom said that wounded me so deeply then and still wound me today. All the little hurts are faded and forgotten.

One incident does spring to mind from when I visited home in New York with my then 5-month-old baby girl, my first child. Back then I was so into being a naturally minded mother–so careful about everything–babywearing, cloth diapering, breastfeeding, and being as much of a crunchy granola hippie mom as I could possibly be.

I handed the baby over to my mom upon walking through her door after traveling from Texas to see her. I began to notice that as my mother held the baby in the kitchen, she kept turning her back to me. When we finally danced around enough for her to face me, I caught her in the act of surreptitiously smearing chocolate frosting on my baby’s lips. Dear friend, I completely flipped my lid.

I was so mad at my mom and didn’t hold back from expressing this loudly. Thus far my new baby had only consumed breast milk and gentle foods, like steamed sweet potatoes and avocados, yet there she was, happily licking frosting off her face like a tiny sugar hound.

My mom was beyond delighted that her granddaughter clearly enjoyed chocolate buttercream. I threatened to stay in a hotel if my mom pulled a stunt like that again and spent the next several hours absolutely fuming.

But here’s the thing. When I retell myself that story now, as legitimately mad as I was then, including feeling dismissed and mocked as a new mother, I can’t think of that day and not laugh about it. I’d like to say I can’t believe my mom did that, but my mom totally did that, and honestly it’s on-brand for her.

I’m not holding a grudge even though she intentionally besmirched my baby with chocolate frosting, and I can say with certainty that she didn’t hold my explosive reaction against me. I definitely wasn’t kind and didn’t react well.

I’m not proud of my behavior and embarrassed at how I responded. I should’ve laughed and created such a fun and silly little memory with my mom, but instead, I really did ruin it. My baby wasn’t hurt, but my pride was. I wish I could go back and change that day.

All my life I’ve been an emotional hothead, and thoughts and feelings tend to come out of my mouth in real time as they are forming in my brain, without going through any sort of quality filter first. (I learned much later in my life that I have an ADHD brain and wrote about how ADHD affects grief here.)

I know I’ve said and done things that hurt my mom, and I also know that she loved me enough to brush them off and forgive me. Every single time.

And so it stands to reason that things that our parents did or said to us when they were alive, that may have stung or hurt at the time, don’t really register with us now. Do you find this to be true?

When we’re grieving a deep loss, we primarily remember the love that we had. We’re likely not writing lists with two columns, comparing and measuring our past good experiences with all the things our parent said that hurt us.

Of course, our parents had faults and made mistakes, but I think many of us would so quickly brush those aside if only we could have one more hour or one more conversation with our lost parent. Just one more day.

I think it’s fair that we stop beating ourselves up for the things that we said in the past or the things we did that were less than ideal that bothered or hurt or annoyed our parents.

Recently, my 14-year-old daughter, a.k.a. the chocolate frosting baby, had an emotional day in which she firmly pressed several of my buttons and poked more than a couple nerves. At bedtime, I realized that she was trying to avoid me, to not be in the same room, or make eye contact with me. I sensed her disquiet so strongly, as if I could see her disrupted feelings in the air around her.

She admitted she was worried that I was mad at her, and it broke my heart a little, because she clearly didn’t realize that the handful of unkind words she had lobbed like a grenade in my direction earlier would never make me truly mad at her.

Apparently, I need to remind her more that no matter what happens and no matter what comes and goes in this life, at the end of the day she is my baby, whom I will always love. Forgiveness comes easily from me to her. Loving her is so easy.

The bad feelings I felt when she threw her teenage angst at me that day are just a couple drops of hurt, so quickly swallowed by the deep ocean of love I have been amassing for her for the past 14 years. That ocean is only going to get bigger. The tiny hurts aren’t even drops in a bucket.

If you are a parent, you might understand what I mean. (And if you are not a parent, I hope my example helped a little.) I think it’s the way many of our parents thought about and loved us. They would want you to let yourself off the hook. They would want you to stop torturing yourself about that thing you said or what you did. Even if it was a big thing and not just a small hurt. You don’t need to undo it. It’s already gone, dear grieving friend. It’s been gone.

I think if we were granted one more conversation or one more day with our parent who died, and we used part of that precious time to apologize for the things we shouldn’t have said or to say that we wished we would’ve called more or visited more often, I have a feeling most of our parents would stop us before the words fully left our mouths to let us know that we were forgiven long ago, and that there is no point now in continuing to hurt ourselves and beat ourselves up for how we acted before.

I know my teenage chocolate frosting baby is doing her best. I am my mother’s child still trying to do the same. And you, my friend, are right there with us all, hopefully beginning to let go of the guilt you’ve been carrying. Take a big deep breath, and when you slowly let it out, allow the forgiveness to find its way in.


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