Forgiving a Parent: What It Means and What It Does Not Mean

When you feel as though you have been betrayed, the person who harmed you can feel like an enemy. This feeling can be exacerbated when the person that hurt or betrayed you is someone you would not expect. Since we often expect parents to love and protect us, it can be even harder when it is a parent that you feel hurt by. It can carry an additional layer of pain because one’s inclination is to think that they ought to have had more consideration for you.

When A Parent Hurts You: Reasons for Unforgiveness Toward a Parent

A parent is meant to nurture their child. Even when that child gets older, the relationship changes, and the child becomes independent and takes care of themselves, it is still expected that the parent should not hurt or manipulate the child. When this happens, it can lead the child to resent their parents, and that can ossify into unforgiveness.

A child might develop unforgiveness toward their parent because of:

Not showing up

Children need the support and encouragement of their parents, as that helps to nurture them and gives them confidence to face various challenges. Even as an adult, a word of encouragement from your parent will go a long way, while a word of criticism can still deflate you. When a parent does not show up, especially in those moments when most needed, it can spark disappointment and resentment.

Breaking one’s word

Trust is hard-won. It takes time to be taken at your word and develop a track record of faithfulness, to show that what you say reflects who you are. When a parent repeatedly breaks their word to their child, that breaks trust. If the issue is significant enough to the child, it can break the relationship itself.

Taking advantage of the child

Sometimes, if a parent has mental health or substance abuse issues, if they are irresponsible, or relate in a codependent way, it may be that the parent can take advantage of their child. That can happen financially, emotionally, or otherwise. Having your boundaries violated by being taken advantage of can make you angry and resentful, which puts one on the path to unforgiveness.

Misunderstanding and frustrating the child

Parents ought to treat their children with gentleness, seeking to understand them and meeting them where they are. When a parent imposes themselves on their child, ignoring that child’s proclivities, gifts, and sensitivities, that can frustrate the child. They may feel stifled, misunderstood, and unappreciated for who they are.

Abandoning or abusing a child

Parental abandonment can happen through divorce, death, or being emotionally absent and not meeting the child’s needs. The effects of abandonment can linger long into adulthood, as can the effects of suffering abuse or trauma at the hands of a parent. If this trauma is not resolved, it can negatively affect how one forms and acts within relationships.

What Forgiving A Parent Means and Does Not Mean

When your parent hurts you, that may result in shock, anger, resentment, and unforgiveness. The last thing on your mind might be forgiving a parent for whatever they did. Forgiveness is difficult. However, it can be made all the more taxing if forgiveness itself is misunderstood.

What then does forgiveness mean? What does it entail and what does it not entail? Forgiving a parent includes the following:

• Choosing to let go of ill feelings toward them.
• Not desiring terrible things to happen to them to repay what they did to you.
• Unburdening yourself of the desire to harm them.

Simply put, forgiveness is about what is happening in your own heart. It is not about whether the other person deserves it, or even if they asked for it. Forgiving a parent is about letting go of the negative feelings generated by your hurt and choosing not to be bound by them. It releases you from it.

Another way to understand why forgiveness is largely centered on you is to become aware of what unforgiveness is doing to you. When you hold onto bitterness and you decide to not forgive someone, it affects your body in serious ways.

The negative health effects of unforgiveness are widely documented, and these include but are not limited to issues such as an increased risk of heart disease, stress, depression, anxiety, diabetes, social isolation, and compromised physical health due to stress on your immune system.

Being angry at someone and holding onto bitterness takes a physical toll on your body, as your fight-or-flight response is triggered. Forgiving someone has positive health benefits, such as lowering your stress levels, reducing the risk of a heart attack, helping you get better sleep, as well as improving your cholesterol levels, and reducing your blood pressure, depression, and levels of anxiety.

You must also not forget that forgiveness allows you to commune with the Lord freely (Matthew 6:14-15).

Forgiveness is not about saying that what your parent did to you is okay. The last thing forgiveness attempts to do is to give a pass; forgiveness presupposes that what happened was wrong and that there was no excuse for it. If it were not wrong, or if there was a reasonable explanation for a behavior, forgiveness would not even be on the discussion table.

It is important to acknowledge that forgiveness does not happen all at once. You may choose to walk away from resentment today and find yourself mired in it the next day. Forgiveness is a long road of daily letting go of anger and resentment, of choosing to not hold what your parent did against them, of letting the Lord deal with them instead of wanting vengeance on your terms (Romans 12:17-21).

Forgiveness also is not saying that everything is now okay between you and your parent. If trust has been broken, then it takes time to rebuild it. If a crime has been committed, forgiveness does not mean the law cannot take its natural course.

Additionally, forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation, which is when you restore friendly relations. Forgiveness is the first step to reconciliation, but reconciliation takes place when wrongs are acknowledged, and you both choose to move forward together into a renewed relationship. In some cases, such as when a parent has died or it is dangerous to associate with them, reconciliation is not possible, but forgiveness is.

Christian Counseling: Help for Forgiving a Parent

Forgiving a parent who hurt you is not always easy. There may be years of feelings to process and understand, and the damage done takes time to unravel. It can also take time to learn to live in forgiveness and to relinquish anger. Anger is a strong emotion, and it can make you feel powerful in those moments when you are weak. Relinquishing anger to embrace the sadness, vulnerability, or fear that you truly feel is a difficult thing.

The good news is that you do not have to do it alone. A Christian counselor can help you unpack complicated feelings in a safe space, explore what God’s healing means for your past wounds, can flesh out forgiveness in your relationship with your parent and with the Lord. A Christian counselor can help you draw from Scripture and other spiritual resources such as prayer to better understand forgiveness and to be able to do it from your heart.

If your parent harmed you in some way, know that it is possible to forgive them, and to learn tools to help you cope with the effects of their actions. You can have freedom and joy; reach out to us today and we can connect you to a Christian counselor to get the help you need.