Last week, I watched my daughter carefully arrange her stuffed animals in a perfect line before bed, each one exactly the same distance apart.
She fussed when one was slightly crooked, adjusting it three times before she was satisfied. My heart squeezed a little because I saw myself in that moment—the same need for order, for things to be “just right” that I’ve carried since childhood.
It made me think about this truth that’s been sitting heavy in my chest lately: our parents didn’t raise us the way they wanted to. They raised us the way they were capable of.
And that gap between their dreams for us and what they could actually give? That’s where all our tender spots live. But it’s also where our fiercest strengths grew.
The weight of their unfinished stories
When I was growing up, money was tight. Really tight. But we always had a garden bursting with tomatoes and squash, and the kitchen always smelled like something simmering.
My parents gave us what they could—not fancy toys or vacations, but soil under our fingernails and the knowledge of how to make something from nothing.
Looking back now as a parent myself, I see how hard they tried. How my mother’s strict rules weren’t just about control but about her own fears of not being enough. How my father’s emotional distance wasn’t coldness but the only way he knew to cope with his own unprocessed pain.
They were doing their best with tools handed down from their own parents, tools that were sometimes broken or incomplete. Just like I’m doing now with my kids, trying to heal my own patterns while not creating new ones for them to untangle later.
Where the wounds become windows
Here’s what nobody tells you about those childhood wounds: they become the exact places where light gets in. The perfectionism I learned as the middle child, always trying to be good enough to be seen?
It made me hyper-aware of when my own kids need individual attention. The people-pleasing that had me bending myself into shapes to keep everyone happy? It taught me to recognize when my daughter starts doing the same thing.
Every Sunday when I make pancakes with my kids (okay, my husband usually takes pancake duty while I drink coffee), I think about the meals my mother stretched to feed us all.
She couldn’t give us abundance in the way she probably dreamed of, but she gave us creativity and resilience. Those gaps in what she wanted to provide became the spaces where I learned to provide for myself.
The inheritance we don’t talk about
You know what’s wild? We inherit our parents’ unfulfilled dreams along with their limitations. My mother wanted to be the kind of parent who never raised her voice, who had endless patience.
Instead, she was human—frazzled, sometimes sharp, often exhausted. That distance between her ideal and her reality became my inheritance too.
For years, I carried shame about the parts of my childhood that felt hard. Why couldn’t my parents just be different? Why did I have to be the one working through these patterns in therapy, in journal pages, in those moments when I catch myself repeating words I swore I’d never say?
But then I became a parent. And suddenly I understood that they were just people, carrying their own unhealed wounds while trying to raise children.
The strict rules that felt suffocating? They came from a grandmother who knew even less about emotional regulation. The inability to talk about feelings? Generations of “we don’t discuss that” echoing through bloodlines.
Finding strength in the struggle
Can I tell you something that might sound strange? I’m grateful for the struggles. Not in a toxic positivity way, but in a real, gritty truth way.
The financial stress of my childhood taught me resourcefulness that serves me every single day. When my kids want to do a craft and we’re out of supplies, I remember my mother making magic from cardboard boxes and old magazines.
The emotional distance I experienced taught me to become deeply attuned to my own children’s emotional needs.
When my son comes to me with big feelings, I can hold space for them because I know what it feels like when nobody does. The perfectionism I developed trying to earn love taught me to recognize when love needs to be freely given, no strings attached.
These strengths didn’t come despite the wounds—they came through them. They grew in those exact spaces where my parents couldn’t give me what they wished they could.
Breaking and building at the same time
Now I’m the parent, and oh boy, the humbling is real. Despite all my awareness, all my healing work, all my promises to do better, I still find myself falling short of my own ideals.
Just last week, I snapped at my daughter over spilled juice when really I was overwhelmed about a work deadline. I saw her little face crumple and thought, “Here I am, creating the gap.”
But here’s what I’m learning: we can acknowledge the gap while also working to close it. When I mess up, I apologize. When I see myself repeating patterns, I pause and try again.
My kids are watching me be imperfect and watching me repair. Maybe that’s its own gift—showing them that parents are humans doing their best, that repair is possible, that perfection was never the goal anyway.
The grace we all deserve
If you’re reading this and feeling that familiar ache of childhood wounds, know this: your parents were probably doing the best they could with what they had. This doesn’t minimize your pain or excuse harmful behavior.
Your feelings are valid. Your wounds are real. And also, your parents were likely wounded children raising children, doing the impossible task of giving what they never received.
The distance between what they wanted to give you and what they could give you isn’t a failure—it’s human. And in that space, in that gap, you developed strengths you might not even recognize yet.
The hypervigilance became intuition. The self-reliance became capability. The sensitivity to others’ moods became empathy.
We’re all walking around carrying these invisible inheritances, these gaps and wounds and unexpected strengths. We’re all trying to give our children what we didn’t get while processing what we did get. It’s messy and beautiful and heartbreaking and healing all at once.
Moving forward with all of it
These days, when I see my daughter arranging those stuffed animals just so, I don’t rush to fix her need for order or worry about the perfectionism taking root.
Instead, I sit with her and say, “They look cozy all lined up like that.” I’m learning to hold space for who she is while also showing her that things can be imperfect and still be good.
We’re all carrying forward what our parents gave us—the wounds and the strengths, the gaps and the gifts. The work isn’t to pretend the wounds don’t exist or to stay stuck in them forever. The work is to see them clearly, to understand where they came from, and to choose what we pass on.
Your parents raised you the way they were capable of. You’re raising your children the way you’re capable of. And in that truth, in that acceptance, there’s freedom to be imperfect, to be human, to be enough.
