Last week, I watched my mother hold Milo while simultaneously critiquing how I let him “run wild” at the farmers’ market. She kissed his forehead tenderly, then turned to me and said, “You really should be firmer with him.” And in that moment, I felt it again: that familiar twist in my chest where deep love and sharp resentment tangle together like roots beneath soil.
For years, I thought something was wrong with me. How could I adore these people who raised me and also feel this burning frustration toward them? I’d sit in my garden, pulling weeds with more force than necessary, wrestling with the guilt of harboring these contradictory feelings. Good daughters don’t resent their parents. Grateful adults don’t hold grudges about childhood. Or so I believed.
But here’s what I’ve learned, with two kids of my own and dirt perpetually under my fingernails: love and resentment aren’t opposites. They’re what happens when imperfect people raise you with imperfect love, doing their absolute best with the tools they had, even when those tools weren’t enough.
The weight of their best intentions
My father worked long hours, often coming home with tired eyes. He provided everything we needed and most of what we wanted. But I can count on one hand the number of real conversations we had before I turned eighteen.
Was he trying his best? Absolutely. He grew up with nothing and swore his kids would have everything. But his definition of “everything” didn’t include emotional availability or learning how to talk to his middle child about anything deeper than homework.
My mother ran our household like a tight ship. Three kids, spotless house, dinner at six sharp. She made everything from scratch, never missed a recital. She also believed children should be seen and not heard, that crying was manipulation, and that talking back deserved immediate punishment.
Their best was significant. Their best was also limited. And those limits carved spaces in me that I’m still learning to fill.
When your wounds become your parenting blueprint
Here’s something nobody tells you: the moment you have kids, every unhealed part of your childhood shows up uninvited. Like when Ellie comes to me crying about a scraped knee, and my first instinct is to say “You’re fine, stop crying” because that’s what I heard. I catch myself, kneel down, validate her pain instead. But that initial response? That’s thirty years of programming.
Or when my parents visit and watch me comfort Milo through a tantrum instead of sending him to his room. My mother’s lips purse. “We never allowed that behavior,” she says. And I want to scream that maybe if they had allowed feelings, I wouldn’t have spent my twenties in therapy learning it was okay to have them.
But I don’t scream. Because despite everything, I love them. They’re the same people who stayed up all night when I had the flu, who cheered at every terrible middle school play, who still call to check if I’m eating enough even though I’m a grown woman with my own family.
The myth of having to choose
Society loves clean narratives. Your parents were either good or bad. You’re either grateful or ungrateful. But real life exists in the messy middle, where your father can be both the man who was emotionally distant and the one who worked himself to exhaustion to give you opportunities he never had.
Where your mother can be both the woman who dismissed your emotions and the one who hand-sewed your Halloween costumes every single year because she wanted you to feel special.
I spent years trying to pick a side. Grateful daughter or wounded child. It was exhausting, this constant mental gymnastics of justifying my resentment or suppressing it with guilt. “They did their best,” I’d tell myself, as if that should erase the impact. “But it hurt,” my heart would whisper back, as if that should erase their love.
What changes when you stop choosing sides
Something shifted when I stopped trying to resolve this internal conflict. When I accepted that I could be grateful for my father’s sacrifices AND grieve the emotional connection we never had. That I could appreciate my mother’s dedication AND acknowledge how her rigidity affected my ability to trust my own feelings.
This isn’t about blame. My parents were raised by people with their own limitations, who were raised by people with theirs. It’s generational dominoes, each person doing slightly better than the last, but still carrying forward what they couldn’t heal.
Now when my parents question my parenting choices (the co-sleeping, the extended breastfeeding, the “permissive” way I handle big emotions), I see it differently. They’re not judging me. They’re defending their own choices, protecting themselves from the possibility that maybe there was another way.
Breaking the cycle while honoring the past
Matt and I talk about this often, usually during those golden hours after the kids are asleep, when we’re too tired to pretend everything’s perfect. How do we give our children what we didn’t get without making our parents feel like failures? How do we heal our wounds without weaponizing them?
The answer isn’t simple, but it starts with this: acknowledging that multiple truths can exist simultaneously. My parents’ limitations caused me pain AND they loved me fiercely. I can give my children emotional attunement they deserve AND appreciate that my parents gave me what they could.
When Ellie asks why Grandma doesn’t understand when she’s sad, I don’t lie. “Grandma grew up learning that being strong meant not crying. She loves you so much, and she shows it differently than we do.” It’s honest without being cruel, truthful without being weaponized.
Finding peace in the contradiction
These days, I can sit across from my parents at Sunday dinner, watching them interact with my children, and hold all of it. The gratitude and the grief. The love and the resentment. The appreciation for who they are and the sadness for who they couldn’t be.
Because here’s what I know now: healing doesn’t mean you stop feeling the hurt. It means you stop believing the hurt is all there is. It means you can see your parents as whole people who did their best with broken tools, and love them for trying while acknowledging the scars their efforts left behind.
Sometimes I catch myself parenting from my wounds, and sometimes I catch myself parenting from my healing. Both are part of this journey. Both are valid. Both can exist in the same moment, in the same heart, in the same complicated love between generations.
My children will probably sit somewhere in their thirties, processing their own contradictions about me. Despite my best efforts, my limitations will become part of their story. But maybe, if I’m honest about my own struggles, if I show them that love can coexist with disappointment, that gratitude can share space with grief, they’ll spend less time than I did believing they have to choose.
And maybe that’s how we really break the cycle. Not by being perfect, but by being honest about our imperfection. Not by erasing the wounds, but by teaching our children they’re allowed to acknowledge them while still choosing love.
