Have you ever had a really uncomfortable exchange with someone close to you and instead of addressing it you chose to let it go?

And it worked…for a while….until they did that thing again and then you realized you couldn’t ignore it.

What happens when that exchange is with your parents?

We have gotten to the age, my friends, where boundaries are essential…even with our parents.

So today we’re going to talk about it in all of it’s uncomfortableness because we’re out here trying to be whole and healthy.

But before we enter into this conversation, we’ve got to establish some shared beliefs about the people who gave us life.

We must remember…

1. Our parents are doing the best that they can.

We are approaching a stage of adulthood where we are seeing our parents as people–messy, complicated, imperfect people. Our parents can only love, advise, and parent us from their experiences and the extent of their healing. We don’t have to accept the hurtful things they do, but we should work to give them grace.

We are living in a time when things like self-care, therapy, introspection, and healing are at the forefronts of our mind and top of our priority lists.

That’s not always true for our parents.

We are learning to allow ourselves the space and time to feel and explore our emotions. We see the origins of hurt through therapy, we share, we confront, we release and all of those things come into direct conflict with, “You better not put my business out in the street.”

2. As we get older, honoring our parents looks different.

I was having a marathon catchup with a friend a few weeks ago, and she brought up this incredibly profound point that I take no credit for but wanted to share:

Regardless of how our parents see us, we aren’t kids anymore and how we honor them looks different.

When we were children, honoring them meant obeying them and learning what it was that they were trying to instill in us.

Now, it looks like being the best version of our adult selves we can be–even if that sometimes comes into direct conflict with who they are and how they choose to live.

3. Boundaries aren’t bad.

Unpopular Opinion: Some of ya’ll are out here using boundaries in really unhealthy, unproductive, and unloving ways.

We live for a good cut off, ice out, or brush off.

Someone hurts you and that’s that.
Suddenly, you’re remembering that time 5 and half a years ago when they forgot your birthday and suddenly they ain’t ish.

Never mind all of the ways they have loved, supported, and rooted for you.
And so now, you need to impose some boundaries to get them in check.

Stop weaponizing boundaries.

We have to stop thinking about boundaries as a tool to keep from having to do work in our relationships. Boundaries says, “I love you AND me too much to allow resentment to inhabit the space of our relationship.”

Go ‘head and pick your jaw up off the floor.

Stop arguing with me about how I don’t know what they’ve done to you.

Yes girl, repost, retweet, and share this line in the group chat so you and your girls can dissect it over a good glass of wine and a charcuterie board or someone lemon pepper wings–hey, snacks depend on the day of the week and the mood I’m in.

So now that we’re all walking into the rest of the post with these common understandings in place, let us continue.

It’s okay to say, “I can’t handle that.”

Sometimes, my mom thinks I can handle more than I can.

The enormity of her hurt is a load that I just don’t always have strength for.

And it took a whole nervous breakdown for me to figure that out.
And I don’t want that to have to be your tipping point.

I asked one of my students if I could share a conversation we had a few weeks ago.

She came to school emotionally wrecked.

Her parents’ best isn’t good enough and the weight of their dysfunction, trauma, and sadness has fallen on her 14 year old shoulders.

She hates to see her mom cry.

She feels like she can’t express how she feels and the hurtful things she sees and experiences because she feels like she needs to be strong for her siblings.

And in her, I saw my 14 year old self, sobbing in my 8th grade English teacher’s classroom because the weight of my parents sadness was just too much and I too couldn’t talk to them about how their hurt was impacting me. I could see they were barely holding onto their sadness before I was old enough to drive.

And I’m going to say the same thing to you, I said to my student…and what I was probably told by my teacher:

It’s not your job to make your parents happy.
And even if it was, you’d fail every single time.
Only they can do the work of making themselves happy and whole.

As we get older we believe that we should protect our parents. I–like most of you–will do whatever I need to make sure my parents are okay.

But I’ve learned that doesn’t include shouldering the responsibility of their happiness.

It’s okay to address things that are hurtful.

My mother is beautiful and kind and sometimes really hurtful.

One of her favorite non-apologies is, “I’m sorry for how I said it, but I’m not sorry for what I said.

Well dang, if that’s the case then keep the apology because WHAT you said was just as hurtful as HOW you said it.

And for a long time I just kept that thought in my head. Because we all know what would happen if you had something to say….

And beyond the universal (un?)healthy fear most black kids from all over the diaspora carry with them for their parents, there was another reason I kept quiet:

While I was tasked with carrying my mom’s hurt, I don’t know if she could carry mine.

I very rarely was the cause of my mom’s pain…but she was often the cause of mine. I didn’t know if she would be okay knowing that. Even now, I am so fearful that by admitting that my mom hurt my feelings, people won’t see a multi-dimensional human being who sacrificed and endured, but a mean neglectful mom–of which she is the complete opposite.

So I kept my mouth closed and endured and she kept acting in the way she knew, because I never told her it wasn’t okay to take her frustrations out on me.

Until I did.

And she owned that hurt.

While she didn’t love the boundaries I erected, she has tried really hard to honor them.

And for that, I love her even more than I already did.

It’s okay to let your parents live.

This boundary is less about one I had to set with my parents and more of one I had to set for myself.

In the same way our parents want what is best for us, I want whats best for them…my version of the best.

My-almost 30-grind-to-shine version of best.

I was lamenting on my therapists couch one day about how my parents just weren’t living their best lives when she stopped me and said,

“Nicole…if they were truly tired of how they were living, don’t you think they would do something about it?”

Y’all.

That one question freed me like none other.
I gave myself permission for stop worrying and feeling responsible for the choices they were making.

While I’m not done working on me, through Jesus, therapy, boundaries, and wine….I’ve gotten rid of so much of the hurt and resentment that was filling my relationships with my beautiful, complicated, imperfect parents.

Now there’s more space for love, compassion and empathy.

What is that you need to establish with your parents? What is it you need to establish within yourself? My prayer is you do the work to find it and release the rest.

There’s magic in our musings, compassion, and boundaries,
Nicole