Forgiving My Asian Parents
After much anger and protest, I give forgiveness to my parents and myself and let go of any resentment towards them
“If I hurt you, I’m sorry. I know you guys are grown up now,” my father said to me on the phone. I was having a conversation with him about how he was treating me like a kid even though I was in my late twenties. I had written my parents a letter about my appreciation for them, and also some strains we have in our relationship.
“I feel very lucky to have caring parents like you who have worked hard and sacrificed much to provide for me and keep me safe. Not very many parents will take the extra steps of putting their kids through math prep school, weekend Chinese school, SAT classes, and college. I’m writing this letter to you because I think our relationship can be difficult at times due to a misunderstanding of each other and unclear communication. I hope we can cultivate an adult-to-adult relationship through better communication and understanding. This means that we treat each other as autonomous individuals, respecting each other’s decisions and way of thinking. It means that we don’t try to change the other person or tell them what to do. I know it is not easy for you to think of me as an adult, but the reality is that I am grown up now and I can make my own decisions, big or small.”
My father called me after reading my letter. “Your grandma still treats me like a kid and I’m in my sixties!” he reminded me. “I know!” I responded. “But please try to do something different and treat me respectfully!”
He agreed to do his best. We don’t have conversations like this very often, but I was very glad that we had such a direct conversation about the state of our relationship that day. It was a relief to finally be heard and to hear a response that wasn’t denial or minimizing of my emotions. Even though my father apologized to me that day, I still spent the next few years unpacking the repercussions of my childhood trauma. It took me three years to finally reach a point of forgiving him. It wasn’t an easy task, and even now I am still occasionally angry with him and my mother over past hurts, but I knew forgiveness was an emotional task I needed to complete to move forward with my life.
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Children who remain angry at their parents’ past actions sometimes use this anger as a way to subconsciously hold on and stay connected to their parents, but the connection they maintain is not a healthy one. By holding this grudge, children continue to wait for an apology from their parents for not being able to provide certain things the children needed as kids. These grudges keep the adult children in a mental state of continuing to be wounded and clinging children. To fully become healthy and happy mature adults, children need to process anger and give forgiveness to their parents and themselves.
For the parents’ part, almost every single parent loves their child and tries their best within their capabilities at the time. In reality, if the parents weren’t able to meet one of their children’s needs during the first fifteen years of a child’s life, it means they didn’t have the quality or skill in themselves. Confronting parents over past mistakes generally won’t be well-received and most parents will not readily admit to their faults. If the parents were to hear from their children the extent to which the parents left wounds that the child has had to heal from, they would only hear this in anguish as they cannot go back to change anything.
“We cannot control who brings us into this world. We cannot influence the fluency with which they raise us; we cannot force the culture to instantly become hospitable. But the good news is that, even after injury, we can have our lives back. When we are like the body, doing the work of growth, wading through the shit, just breathing or resting, we are very alive…If we could realize that the work is to keep doing the work, we would be much more fierce and much more peaceful.” — Clarissa Pinkes Estes
Several times, I witnessed my father crying when he told me about his family’s poverty in Vietnam and his humiliation at having to sell shoes on the street to make money. His witnessing of my grandfather’s need to borrow money impressed upon him the severity of his family’s situation. My grandfather had to bribe the Vietnamese military so his eldest son and my father wouldn’t get drafted into the Vietnam War, and he took advances on his entire annual bonus to pay off military drafters. The family also had to borrow money for the children’s school books and return the loan to the principal when they could save enough cash.
I felt my father’s heartbreak when he recalled how his family had asked their friends for help during the tough times and their friends did not extend any aid. It seemed to me the experience left him embittered and was certainly not moments he wanted to revisit or share. I conjecture that he didn’t want his children to go through the same suffering and decided that he would earn enough money to put his children through college without incurring debt, so they could start their adult financial lives with a leg up. I imagine his yelling and overprotectiveness comes from his traumatic suffering and his sense of helplessness at not being able to depend on people he knew to help his family in their time of need.
“Mom and Dad, in the future, I appreciate it if you could try to understand my reasoning and support me in my decisions. If I decide that I need your input, I will ask. I appreciate advice, but not commands or reprimands. For my part, I will try to give you the same things I am asking you to give me. I promise I will respect your choices in how you live your life. This means I will not criticize you or pressure you into doing something, even if I don’t understand or agree with your choices. Lastly, I know that you show you care for me through filling up my gas tank, and cooking what I like to eat when I am at home. Sometimes, you may express your concern for me and I might not receive it the right way. Please know that I understand that you are asking me these questions because you care.”
While hashing out the tensions in my relationship with my parents, my therapist did her best to reframe my parents’ actions for me not as them overstepping on my freedoms or trying to sabotage my major life plans, even though it might feel like it for me. In actuality, they are worried about me and trying to make my life as comfortable as possible. They just love me and are scared that I’m making unwise decisions. I can’t change their fear, so I should just appreciate their clumsy concerns. She called their yelling “paperbarks,” where the “bark is worse than bite.” In other words, they seem more hostile and aggressive than they are.
She also tried to draw out from me all the actions my parents took to care for my brother and me that I took for granted. “You have tried hard to give me a good childhood by taking me traveling, playing board games with me, taking me on bike rides, buying me birthday gifts and clothes, buying me a violin, giving me braces, teaching me to swim, and cooking me my favorite foods whenever I visit. You taught me how to manage my finances. You have helped me tremendously in becoming the successful adult that I am today,” I wrote in my letter to my parents. I have some other memories of going to the mall as a kid with my family and asking my father to carry me because I was tired of walking. Sometimes, I’d ask to continue to be carried even though he said his arms were tired. He would do it for a short while longer until his arms were about to give out.
I wrote my letter to my parents asking to be treated as an adult with the help of my therapist, and it was the first of many steps in defining myself as separate from my family’s turbulent environment. It was the first time I used my voice in defining my boundaries and decisions, making clear what I would and would not do. It was a different way of operating that required adjustment from me and my parents. My therapist warned me that I would inevitably experience discomfort when my parents didn’t like what I did or said, and my parents too would experience discomfort when I didn’t rush to change myself to gain their approval.
I was striking a new balance between taking care of my own needs and still being connected to my family. It was difficult to deal with my parents, but I knew I didn’t want to ignore them or cut them out. Still, just because I listened to what they told me, it didn’t mean I would give in whenever they expressed their displeasure with my actions. Knee-jerk reactions like changing my decision to keep them happy would have been equivalent to backsliding. My therapist assured me that making a choice was a big step in the right direction toward self-control.
Although my relationship with my parents is far from perfect, I have seen many improvements over the years. I have shared with them more details of my private life than I would have previously, have graciously accepted their help and advice when I deemed it appropriate, have learned new details about their painful Vietnamese past by asking some pointed questions, regularly say “I love you” to each other, have more patience in my interactions with them which helps to keep the conversations calm and civil. I have a new compassion for them when I think of all they endured as immigrants and what they have given me despite their challenging circumstances.
I realize that despite my forgiveness of my parents and myself for being angry at them, I need to keep my distance because their trauma still exists and is unhealed. They still argue with each other every day, they are still critical and anxious, they are still emotionally devoid, and they still trigger me. They still don’t know how to graciously accept my gifts when I try to treat them to a nice dinner or gift them with high-quality clothes, and they will often complain that I am wasting my money. I have accepted that this is the way they are and the way they will remain. Much of this negative energy is not healthy for me, so I have to maintain safe boundaries for myself.
How will I know when I am done with forgiving my parents? As Clarissa Pinkes Estes says, I would “feel sorrow over the circumstances instead of rage, [and I would] feel sorry for [my parents] rather than [be] angry with them.” I would understand how they have suffered in the past to drive their hurtful actions when I was a child. Most tellingly, I would not have anything “left to remember to say about it at all.” I wrapped up my letter to my parents by writing: “I am happy to discuss my letter with you over the phone and here’s to hoping for a better relationship between all of us. Love, Jennifer.”
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