Parenting is hard.
Parenting while carrying your own childhood wounds? Even harder.
Many of us brought our pasts into motherhood without even realizing it. We didn’t set out to repeat old patterns or project our pain – but sometimes, that’s exactly what happened.
Maybe you grew up in a home where emotions were ignored, anger was explosive, or affection was conditional. Maybe you were left to fend for yourself too early. Or maybe your parents did their best, but they simply didn’t have the tools.
And when it was your turn to raise children, you carried all of that with you – whether you meant to or not.
We don’t parent in a vacuum. We parent from the stories we’ve lived, the fears we haven’t unpacked, and the healing we’re still working through.
When I Became a Parent
I was completely clueless. I am the youngest of eight children and by the time I came around, my parents were completely DONE. I was mostly raised by my older siblings. My mother’s menopausal mental health issues inflicted significant wounding on me. All I knew, becoming a parent, was that I would raise my kids differently. But I had no idea what that meant.
I voraciously read parenting books from the library. I can remember thinking, “I don’t even know how to PLAY with kids, much less raise them.” I read books about playing with children and planned fun activities and outings.
In the fire of parenting, I truly learned to love. Patience increased, creativity and confidence grew. I loved being a mom!
I also made plenty of mistakes. Some were out of ignorance of what was the right thing to do. Some were my own painful reactions to my own past. Parenting is a mixture of sheer love and terror. We fumble through the days, sometimes unaware of missteps we may be making.
Often, we only see the missteps in retrospect.
I look back at my clumsy parenting with great love, but some incidents stand out in horror. I made mistakes. I’m human.
So What Do You Do When You Realize You Didn’t Always Get It Right?
First, take a breath. That realization doesn’t make you a bad mom. It makes you human.
Second, tell the truth – but tell it with compassion.
You were doing your best, even if your best was shaped by unhealed pain. That doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for everything. But it does mean you get to hold both accountability and self-forgiveness at the same time.
Here’s what forgiveness looks like now:
- It’s naming what didn’t work without judging who you were.
- It’s making peace with the past, so it doesn’t define your future.
- It’s allowing yourself to move forward with love – even if not everything gets fixed.
If you’re in a season of rebuilding with your adult children, you might choose to say, “I know I didn’t always show up the way I wanted to. Some of that had nothing to do with you, and everything to do with what I hadn’t dealt with.”
That kind of honesty opens the door to healing.
And if they’re not ready to walk through that door with you?
You can still walk through it for yourself.
Because the second act of your life deserves freedom, not regret. Forgive the version of you that didn’t yet know what you know now.
You’re not perfect. But you’re still growing. And that matters more than you think.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Can you identify ways in which you parented from your own pain? Are you ready to let them go?
