How forgiveness saved my relationship with my parents

Today I want to talk about how forgiveness saved my relationship with my parents. My relationship with my parents got improved so much after I forgave my parents and also myself.

The worst time of my relationship with my parents

When I was 12 or 13, I started ignoring my parents and our relationship was really bad.

I was living with my parents, so it was really hard for me not to talk to them and ignore them. But I was doing that because I didn’t know how to talk to them.

My dad was really stubborn, and he was often angry and I was really scared of him. And also to my mom. I was ignoring her because I was definitely taking her for granted. And I couldn’t believe that she loved me. I know the belief, “My mom doesn’t love me.” that I created myself was created when I was 3 or 4. I realised that through coaching in my late 20s. But when I was a teenager, I didn’t know how to talk to my mom.

I was feeling terrible about our relationship, but I didn’t know how to start talking to my parents and I didn’t know what I had to do.

How I decided to change myself

Eventually, I moved away from my parents and I started living in Tokyo, Japan. My parents live a bit far from here. So I stopped talking to them completely.

Sometimes texting my mom when she texts me asking how I’m doing or if I need anything, then I just text her back “Yes” or “No”. That was pretty much all the conversations I had with them.

One day I read this book. I still don’t know what book it was. But I remember the story.

The main character was the man who didn’t have a good relationship with his dad. And the last scene was that he sent his dad an email (I think it was an email about how he wants to improve his relationship with his dad), then his dad passed away.

The main character doesn’t know if his dad read his email or not or how his dad felt about it. And as I was reading the book, I started crying really bad. Because that made me imagine my dad dying and I wouldn’t be able to talk to him. I don’t know if he loved me or not and I wouldn’t be able to tell him how much I loved him and how important he was to me. And that made me cry so much. And I didn’t want that. I realised that I wanna tell my dad “I love you”, I wanna improve our relationship and I really wanna get to know him. So I decided to change our relationship.

Forgiving my parents

I still didn’t know what I needed to do. And I think I heard Marie Forleo talk about people doing their best in a moment. I didn’t really get the meaning of it.

But thanks to that, I understood that my dad and my mom were doing their best. When my dad was angry at me and I was scared and I couldn’t forgive him for that. But I didn’t know his whole story. And now I know that his parents didn’t know how to give him love. I brought compassion to him as a person, not as a dad, but as a human being. And he was angry at me and he scared me but I forgave him because he was doing his best.

Also for my mom, when I was a kid I remember I often told my mom that she never listened to me. But it was because she had to take care of my brother and sister and both of them are younger than me. As a small child, I didn’t understand that and I was always angry at my mom. I forgave her for that because she was doing her best and I’m pretty sure that she was taking care of me enough.

I shifted my resentment and anger towards my parents into appreciation and understanding.

I understand your story might be completely different and your parents might have done something really terrible to you that you can’t forgive. But having resentment having hate towards them is not hurting anyone but you. You’re hurting yourself by hating them and not forgiving them. Forgiveness is the way for you to find peace within yourself.

Forgiving myself

Another thing that I had to do was to forgive myself. I forgave myself for the mistakes that I made. I couldn’t actually forgive myself that I was ignoring my parents for years because even though they loved me and they cared for me, I was ignoring them. And I felt like I was such a bad daughter to them.

But I forgave myself for that because I was also doing my best like my parents. I have so many negative beliefs such as my parents don’t love me, I’m not lovable, I don’t deserve anyone and I don’t deserve anything good.

And I was behaving with fear and hate because of these beliefs. So I forgave myself completely and I accepted myself for who I am and who I was.

It might be hard to accept what happened in the past. But the truth is, we can’t change the past. What we can do now is how we respond to what happened and that’s in our control. We can choose to make what happened in the past keep us suffering, or we can choose to respond to accept and surrender to what happened and learn a lesson from it so that we can find peace within ourselves.

Having open and honest communication with my parents

So after I forgave my parents and myself, in my mind, I decided to talk to my dad, just 2 of us which I had never done before. I also decided to talk to my mom, just 2 of us. It was really scary for me because I hadn’t done it for years and I didn’t know how they would react.

But I decided to set my mindset to accept whatever will happen and I decided to be honest and compassionate with them. I don’t know if they pick up my intention but I remember when I talked to my dad, he was a person who always disagrees with me and who tells me what to do and what not to do.

But when I talked to my dad, I said to him, “Hey, Dad, I decided to go vegan and I’ve been vegan for a few years and I don’t know what you think about it, but I’m happy being vegan and I just wanted to tell you honestly what’s going on in my life”. I actually expected that he would say something like, “No, you should eat this and that” but actually he said, “If you don’t have any health problems and If you’re healthy. I think that’s good”.

And I know it’s a normal conversation for many people, but I’ve never heard my dad agreeing with me or accepting what I want to do you so that was so amazing for me, and I’m so happy that I decided to do that. And because I opened up, my dad also started telling me about his stories that something happened in his past and I was so happy because for the first time I felt like he treat me as an adult, not as a small kid.

I also had lunch with my mom and told her what was going on in my life and communicated honestly with her and she also opened up to me so I was really grateful that I made that decision to forgive them and forgive myself and also decided to have an open conversation with both of them.

My relationship with my parents now

Our relationships have been much better whenever I visit them. I am so grateful that I hug them which I didn’t imagine that I would be able to do that in my life. I am so grateful for them and I’m so grateful for the book that I read. I actually don’t know what it is. If you know which book might be, please let me know. Oftentimes death is considered bad or negative. But it reminds us that everything is temporarily so why don’t we start doing the things that we really want to do now? 🙂

“It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.”

– Maya Angelou

Why do I care so much about forgiveness?

Because I can see a more peaceful world if more people find peace within themselves.

I hope you are taking care of yourself and taking care of each other. ☺️ Thank you for reading my blog until the end. Sending you so much love! ❤️

Hi, I am Yoshie and I am a life coach. If you wanna find peace within yourself, feel free to contact me. I am offering a free 60-minute session.

Also, follow me on Instagram at @yoshie.agata