How to Set Your Parents Free
“That’s nothing to cry about.”
This was my mom’s go-to phrase whenever I was experiencing an emotion she didn’t know how to handle. I remember how shut down I would feel in the moments when I was in deep sadness, just wanting to be heard and held, but with good intentions she just wanted to fix me. She wanted to make the pain and sadness stop with well-intended bandaids and she wanted me to feel better by finding the bright side to every situation. This wasn’t because she was neglectful but simply because she didn’t know how to just sit with me and hold me in the acceptance of my hurt. I always thought my mom was really tough because I rarely saw her hurt or sad. She was the master at putting a positive spin on anything, even if the circumstance was supposed to be sad or hard. There was always some type of silver lining or lesson my siblings and I could be learning in the midst of difficult situations.
Here’s the funny part: other than her notorious phrases she had ready to fire, she never really said any of this to me out loud. This, “the glass is always half full even when it hurts” behavior, was something I observed and learned. Somehow, she was teaching me what was acceptable and what wasn’t. No one in our house was ever praised for expressing their feelings honestly and verbally processing situations together was foreign. I started taking notes: I found my accomplishments and positive outlook on life was praised, but my needs for compassion and validation were overlooked. So, I walked away with lessons on holding it together, not being a burden to others and stuffing my emotions — trying to find ways to be accepted by my parents.
The hardest part in all of this for me was that I am someone who feels deeply and wears emotions on my sleeve. My step dad coined me as sensitive and overly emotional. I was seen as fragile, a “crier”, and someone who didn’t like to be told no. Crying when I was angry only got me in trouble and crying when I was sad or disappointed, left me abandoned. I learned how to keep my emotions to myself because being misunderstood felt more painful. It was more painful to get a diagnosis back rather than comfort when I would express my feelings honestly, desiring to be seen and heard. So I made an agreement that it would be better to build walls, stay hard and protect myself from their response to my negative emotions.
I just wanted someone to be okay with me having strong emotions, wrap me up and tell me, “that must have been so painful.” I didn’t need to be fixed, I wasn’t looking for answers and I definitely didn’t need another positive Bible verse read to me. I just needed my pain to be validated. I expected my mom to know how to sit with me in it and accept my feelings instead of being afraid of them. We all have expectations of our parents and we all have needs that didn’t get met by them, whether we are aware of them or not. We have ideas about what our parents should be like, how they should meet our needs and who we want to perceive them as. The reality is, as you outgrow them, there will come times when you have to lay down your expectations of what you wanted them to be to you. Sometimes you even have to remove them from the mom or dad role in specific areas of your life. Although this sounds sad, this is what I would call setting them free. I released my parents from parts of my life that I had previously tried to include them in — ones where I really wanted them to show up, but was repeatedly disappointed. I had to realize this relational dynamic was not just about them. It wasn’t about them becoming the parents I dreamt of or making them feel guilty for areas they didn’t show up in. No, this was about letting the Lord come in and parent me in the places that were lacking. I didn’t need my parents to fill every gap that was missed, I simply needed to become aware that all of those gaps were already full by the Father of all fathers. But, this didn’t happen all in one moment, it was a journey I went on.
Last October, I went home to Texas to visit family for a couple of weeks. Although my family is incredible, I became aware of some dysfunctional dynamics between us. As sadness about this hit me, I couldn’t contain the river that was about to release from my eyes. I wanted to give myself permission to really feel the pain of what I was experiencing, but I knew my family would be bewildered if I just started crying out of nowhere and then followed that by an informational session on family dynamics. So, I excused myself to “the bathroom”, found the nearest closet and cried as hard and as quietly as I could. My mom’s heightened sense of hearing found me, crying in that closet, and shocked, she started asking questions. After attempting to protect myself, I realized how crazy I looked, so I then attempted to explain myself, knowing she very well may not understand. My response to her was followed by hers, “well that’s nothing for you to get worked up about”.
I will spare you the details of the reason behind my sadness, but as those words left my mom’s mouth, I couldn’t speak, I could only cry harder as that phrase triggered everything inside of me. I had fought to be connected to myself, to my emotions. I had chosen to start validating my pain and finding the roots to it and now I was being told to stuff my feelings down once again. Listen, I am not one to yell at my parents, but It was in that closet that I finally raised my voice and told my mom “even if you don’t understand, this is very much something to be sad about. It’s something to cry over and I am going to do that.” I knew I was going to be okay, I just needed to fully express myself, and my mom was really uncomfortable with that. She didn’t know how to comfort me when I was crying and she just wanted to make it all better. Fast forward, the next hour we spent on the floor, in that closet finally being really honest with each other. She admitted she didn’t know how to empathize with me in certain situations and I let her know I was becoming more accepting of my negative emotions and I didn’t need or want her to fix anything. It was a beautiful and messy moment, but I am still experiencing the fruit of it.
That was the night my mom met me right where I was at. We didn’t need to walk away completely understanding one another’s perspectives, we just validated each other’s experience and sought to learn what each of us needed to move forward. As I have gotten older and grown in both my emotional and spiritual intelligence, I have learned to accept my parents as they are. I have to remember they were always doing their best. They were taught how to parent by two imperfect people who also were trying their best. As I have gotten more in touch with the little Jamie who didn’t get everything she needed, I have begun to understand myself better and navigate my needs as an adult, knowing what might have been missing when I was younger. What my parents didn’t give me, hasn’t become an excuse to blame them but rather it has become an opportunity to have a deeper relationship with them. We now get lost in conversation talking about my childhood, why things were done a specific way, what my parents were experiencing as we were growing up and if they were aware of their parenting.
Just like that night in the closet, where I finally admitted to my mom I needed her to stop telling me to stuff my emotions in an attempt to fix things, I realized we get to set our parents free by being honest with them. In honor, we can teach them what we need and we get to ask for it even now as adults. However, they get to choose whether or not they can meet us in those needs. If they can’t, we get to release them from those expectations. There are situations where I know my parents will not be able to empathize and show me comfort where it’s needed, so I have learned when to bring them in and when it’s better for both of us that I don’t. I stopped looking for ways they were not showing up and I started looking for ways they were.
When you allow them to show up in the way they are able to, you actually set them up for success to be your mom and dad! Sometimes it is easy to spend more time focusing on negative qualities you’ve gained from your family, but what if instead we were more fixated on the beautiful things that came with our inheritance? When we set them free from what we think they should be, it makes it easier to reflect on the things they did really well as parents! We get to honor them for the way they did show up, and as our childhood pain heals, we get to rewrite the story into a positive one.
When there is no pressure to be something they are not, and you remove expectations they cannot meet, you get to enjoy them just as they are. We set our parents free by releasing them from roles they cannot play, taking off expectations they cannot meet and letting them love us in their own way. We might be surprised to find they have a lot to contribute to our lives.
