Sharing the forgiveness story

At my internship, I shared my story of forgiveness, both the one about my mother apologizing to me and the one about the man searching for his middle-school teacher. I was given some time to talk at a group meeting of my internship and I opened up this topic just in case people wanted to build on it. Immediately, there was a response. One woman said, "You know what? I thank you. I thank you for saying that. I'm going to go home to my family this holiday and apologize to them for anything I did to them." Another woman could emphasize with my story about my mother apologizing because she said that her mother was not emotionally supportive either. She said that her parents used to say to her, "Why are you saying all those things? You're so stupid." This woman has a better relationship with her parents now, especially with her mother. She said that her mother still calls her stupid, but every once in a while, she'll get a "I love you. You're doing okay." The woman said, "I take that and put it right here [points to her heart]. Things between us aren't perfect, but every time she says, I take it. I take whatever I can get." This makes me think about how many people grow up in emotionally denigrating families. It makes me think of how others went through so much worse than I did and it makes me thankful for my own family. Now, don't get me wrong, my parents also called me stupid when I was a kid, but they were there. That might sound like a flimsy excuse, but it's true. My parents weren't perfect, but they did the best with what they had and THEY WERE THERE. That's more than I can say for a lot of people. I may resent my mother, but other women wish they had a mother to fight with. The last woman to comment on my forgiveness story expressed this exact sentiment. She wished her mother was there. More accurately, she wished her mother was still alive. Her father died when she was four or five and her mother died when she was thirteen, leaving her alone to take care of her newborn son and to fend for herself. That must have been tough. This woman talked about how her mother wasn't always the most sober person in the world, but when she gave birth to her son, her mother said, "You take care of that boy. We're going to take care of your son." Little did they know she would die shortly afterwards. Then the woman burst into tears, saying over and over again, "And I still love her. I still wish she were here. She wasn't the best mom, but she did her best with what she had, and I. Wish. She. Were. Here."

That really moved me. No parent lives forever (although some seem like they do), and I say that even the most "unqualified" parents somehow still manage to at least "be there." Suffice it to say, I'm glad my parents were there.