A Letter to an Estranged Parent

If you’re an estranged parent desperately trying to understand what happened, I want to offer you something I couldn’t have understood until I healed.

You may want answers.

You may want your child to sit across from you and finally tell you everything.

What happened?

What did I do?

Why did you leave?

Why can’t we just talk about this?

You may believe that if they would only explain it well enough, you could finally understand.

But what if they can’t?

Not because they’re punishing you.

Not because they’re hiding something.

Not because they’re unwilling to communicate.

What if they don’t completely understand it themselves yet?

There were years of my life when I couldn’t have explained what was happening inside my own mind.

I could tell you what happened.

I could tell you who said what.

I could tell you what hurt.

But I couldn’t explain what those experiences had taught my brain.

I didn’t understand survival mode.

I didn’t understand why certain things triggered me.

I didn’t understand why I reacted so strongly to things other people thought were small.

I didn’t understand why I overthought, overexplained, feared rejection or sometimes assumed the worst.

I was living inside of it.

How could I explain something I hadn’t learned to understand myself?

It took healing for me to finally connect those dots.

And once I did, something unexpected happened.

For a long time I thought I would eventually tell everyone involved my entire story.

I thought they needed to hear it.

I thought someday I would finally be able to say:

This is what happened to me.

This is what it did to me.

This is how much I suffered.

And then I healed enough that I no longer needed to.

Not because my story stopped mattering.

Because I realized something else.

You don’t have to carry everything I carried in order to love me.

In fact, if someone who genuinely loved me could somehow experience the full weight of what was happening inside my mind during some of the darkest years of my life, I’m not sure I would want them to.

I could barely carry it.

And it was mine.

So if you’re a parent demanding answers from an estranged child because you desperately want to understand, maybe there is another possibility.

Maybe understanding everything isn’t your assignment right now.

Maybe loving them is.

Maybe praying for them is.

Maybe becoming curious about your own part without demanding that they prove it to you is.

Maybe working on yourself is.

Maybe leaving the door open is.

And maybe the parts you cannot understand are the very things you need to hand to God.

You can pray:

God, I don’t understand what my child is going through.

I don’t understand what happened between us.

I don’t know what belongs to me, what belongs to them or what healing will eventually look like.

Show me what I need to see.

Help me change what needs changing in me.

Help my child heal what needs healing in them.

And help me surrender everything I cannot control to You.

Your child may someday tell you more.

They may not.

There may eventually be reconciliation.

There may not.

But please don’t make their ability to explain their suffering the requirement for you to believe that they suffered.

And don’t believe you have to completely understand their mind before you can love them.

Sometimes the most loving thing we can say is:

“I may not understand. But I believe that this was real for you. I love you. I’m praying for you. And I’m going to trust God with what I cannot carry.”

You don’t have to know the entire story today.

Sometimes love doesn’t begin with understanding.

Sometimes love begins with being willing to listen when understanding hasn’t arrived yet.