Letters from the In-Between: perhaps the pain became the gift

I forgive you for not knowing then,

The wisdom you've acquired since when.”

“Though moments may have shamed your soul,

They shaped your journey and made you whole.

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I know how lonely you felt.

Not just emotionally lonely.

Physically lonely.

I know what it felt like to come home and feel unseen.

To want softness, attention, warmth… and not know why it felt so hard to receive it.

I know how badly you wanted to feel chosen.

And I know the story you quietly started telling yourself because of it.

That maybe you were too much.

Or not enough.

Too emotional.

Too difficult to love.

Too easy to leave alone.

Because when you are a child, you do not yet have the emotional capacity to understand that your parents may be carrying wounds of their own.

It feels safer to believe that something is wrong with you than to face the terrifying possibility that the people you depend on emotionally cannot fully give you what you need.

So the child creates meaning the only way they can: “If I become better, quieter, easier, more lovable… maybe I will finally receive the love I am longing for.”

So you adapted.

You became strong.

Independent.

Hyperaware.

Careful.

You learned how to survive the absence of the love you were craving.

But somewhere along the way, survival became identity.

And the little girl who simply wanted to be held started building a life around the belief that she was not enough, was unworthy, had to earn love, prove her worth by doing, achieving and excelling, or survive without needing too much from anyone.

I wish you could have known then what I know now: None of it meant you were unworthy of love.

Your parents were carrying pain too.

Wounds too.

Absence too.

And people can only love from the level at which they themselves have been loved.

That does not erase the pain.

But it changes the way you hold it.

Because eventually, you stop looking at your parents only through the eyes of the child who was hurting… and begin seeing them through the eyes of compassion.

And strangely, that compassion begins healing you too.

Not because what happened was okay.

Not because you suddenly stop grieving what you needed and did not receive.

But because forgiveness softens the places inside you that have stayed hardened for too long.

It releases the resentment.

The shame.

The identity that was built around the wound.

And slowly, you begin returning to yourself.

To the version of you that existed before the pain convinced you that you had to become someone else in order to survive.

I know now that healing is not about pretending the past did not hurt.

It is about choosing not to carry it forever.

And maybe the greatest gift hidden inside all of this… is realizing that it can end with you.

That you can love differently.

Choose differently.

Raise your daughter differently.

That you can stop passing the pain forward.

And maybe one day, you will even look back at everything you lived through and realize:

it shaped you,

but it did not break you.

Forgiveness does not change the past, it frees the heart that keeps carrying it.

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What I know now

• Children often blame themselves because it feels safer than knowing the people they depend on can’t give them what they need.

• Compassion for our parents can become compassion for ourselves.

• The patterns can stop with us.

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Carry this with you

I can honor what hurt me without carrying it forever.

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Before you go…

What part of your pain are you still carrying… that may no longer belong to you?

If you feel like sharing, I would love to read you in the comments.