I Understand Them Better Than I Did

Dear Delyara, Understanding my parents has not erased the hurt. But it has changed its temperature. I can see now that they were frightened people in many ways. Tired, responsible, shaped by harder lives than the ones they wanted for us. They did things that confused or hurt me, yes. But I can also see that some of what felt like coldness was actually fear with no emotional vocabulary. That doesn’t make everything okay. It just makes the picture more human. I think gratitude sometimes begins where idealization ends.