It’s difficult to reflect on the problems of an abusive parent when you’re in the middle of the recovery storm. I remember feelings of bitterness, anger, and resentment surfacing many times throughout my writing journey.
Bitterness had taken root in my heart long before adulthood. I struggled to understand why my mother failed to protect her children or provide the love and security we desperately needed.
For years, she remained the thorn buried deep within my heart. No matter how hard I tried to let go of the resentment, it seemed impossible.
One of the most helpful steps I took was writing a letter to my parents. I told them how their choices affected me as an adult survivor of childhood abuse and neglect. Putting those emotions into words helped lift a burden I had carried for years and slowly made room for compassion and understanding.
Reflecting on an abusive parent’s struggles doesn’t excuse the abuse or erase the pain. Instead, it helps uncover the family dysfunction, unresolved wounds, and brokenness that often shape their lives. Understanding those deeper struggles can become an important step toward forgiveness and healing.
Reflecting on My Mother’s Struggles
My mother rarely spoke about her childhood or the hardships she endured. She kept her formative years hidden, leaving me with little understanding of the burdens she carried as a daughter, a wife, or a mother.
Years later, I received a copy of my original birth certificate in the mail. One detail immediately caught my attention.
My mother was twenty-nine years old when I was born. My father was twenty-eight.
By then, they already had five children. I was the sixth, and three more followed.
I paused and let that reality sink in.
For nearly fourteen years, my mother had spent much of her life pregnant, caring for a growing family, managing a household, and living under circumstances I never fully understood as a child.
It didn’t erase the choices she made.
But it gave me a different perspective.
Gaining a Different Perspective
As I grew older, I began to realize that my mother often escaped the pressures of home through bingo and later through work. Looking back, I wonder if those were the only places where she felt a sense of relief from the burdens she carried.
She remained silent about the abuse and submitted to my father’s wishes, choices that deeply wounded her children.
For many years, I couldn’t understand why.
Eventually, I realized that hurt people often respond to pain with the only coping mechanisms they’ve ever known.
That realization didn’t excuse what happened.
But it softened my heart.
Before my mother passed away, she apologized to one of my younger sisters for what her children had endured. I believe she carried regret for many years.
Today, I choose to remember both the wounds she caused and the burdens she carried.
Forgiveness didn’t happen because the past changed.
It happened because God changed my heart.
Understanding my mother’s brokenness didn’t erase my childhood. Still, it helped me release the bitterness I had carried for so long.
Sometimes healing begins when we stop asking, “Why did this happen to me?” and begin asking, “What pain was my parent carrying that I never knew?”
The answers may not excuse the past, but they can help loosen its grip on our hearts and allow us to journey forward with greater compassion, freedom, and hope.
Related Post: After Ten Years, The Secret Darkness Is Complete
You can learn more about my memoir The Secret Darkness: Overcoming Abuse and Finding Freedom or the companion book Abuse Journal: Reflections of a Survivor’s Healing Journey at lmcarleton.com.
Is a reflective life writer and author of the upcoming memoir The Secret Darkness: Overcoming Abuse and Finding Freedom. Her writing explores healing, faith, creativity, and the journey of restoring scattered remnants into something beautiful again.
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