145. I'm learning to love my divorced parents with a whole heart.

My mum couldn't board the plane and I called my dad to cry to. There are no more "bad parents".

My mum was unable to board her plane last Friday and I was devastated. I was the reason she was at the airport because she was on her way to spend a week with me.

My mum hasn’t been to any of my homes in the last five years and I haven’t visited her much either. There’s no specific reason apart from the fact that my mum and I haven’t ever really been best friends, but we have loved each other deeply in complicated ways. As a teenager, our relationship was never stable because we both had a lot of character and we’d easily clash; or that’s what I was always told. Now that I’m older and can look back, I see many factors and things I was unable to see back then. This means that it becomes easier to understand our old dynamic and see where things were always going wrong.

Last week I wrote about letting go of the idea of being the perfect version of myself and allowing myself to grow on-the-go. This is something I’ve finally been able to apply to my parents too. I no longer expect them to be a certain way, I feel like I can finally love them exactly as they are.

When I moved away from home and got older, I started looking into my childhood wounds in therapy and began to understand that a lot of my behaviour came from needing things from my parents that they didn’t (couldn’t*) give me, emotionally speaking. That discovery led me to feeling angry because after all, children are entitled beings. We see our parents as just that: Parents. As if they were put on this Earth solely to raise us and give us everything we need and want. The next phase I went through was believing that they should have tried to do a better job because they chose to have me. I was their life project and they should have done better. They chose to have children and so they should have worked harder at their full time, lifelong job of being parents. As I said, children are entitled beings.

This new found anger and disappointment pushed me away from my parents and made me resent them in some way or another. I couldn’t connect with either of them because I was deeply hurt and they weren’t even aware. I worked through the feelings as best as I could and it was a rollercoaster of “wow, I really feel different when speaking to them now” which quickly moved back to “oh, here come the shitty feelings again”. They remained the same people while I was going through a whirlwind in my own mind.

I couldn’t tell you exactly what changed my relationship with both my mother and father apart from me. I’ve changed and it’s all mainly because I’ve aged. As I’ve gotten older a lot of things in my life have changed, which most probably pay a part of course, but having more knowledge and understanding of the world, human relationships and seeing myself as a future parent has helped me to understand my own parents and see them in a new light. The first thing that made me realise that I was being unfair with my opinions was that my parents are people above all. Yes, they conceived me and decided to bring me into this world, but they’re also people with friendships, families, friends, co-workers and especially, their own past and baggage. When I stopped seeing them as two people that only existed as parents and realised that they are exactly the same as me, I was able to take it down a gear.

When I look back on my childhood and I remember certain things, instead of seeing my mother as a Goddess and my father as a God, I see them as two humans living together, married for twenty five years, working their asses off to earn money for us to live as well as we did, with their own personal complications as a couple, with difficulty communicating and two teenage kids.

My parents got divorced the year I turned nineteen and at first I thought that my life was going to sky rocket because I’d get the best of both of them separately, but that theory was quickly dismantled. Anyone with divorced parents that belong to a generation where “co-parenting” doesn’t exist can tell you how much of a pain it is. Your nuclear family is suddenly fractionated and you’re divided into two people’s lives that are no longer connected but are deeply connected because you, the shared child, exist. This event sliced my heart in two halves and I quickly learned that I could only ever love one parent at a time because the other one was always going to be the “bad parent”, and the “bad parent” would change depending on what parent or what side of the family I was talking to.

It’s taken me eight years to learn that I can love both of my parents for exactly who they are with my whole heart instead of half of my heart. It’s taken me a long time to understand that they’ll never get on, that they’ll never be friends and that they most probably won’t ever co-parent; but they will always be my parents. They may not see eye to eye or have fond memories of each other, but I do and loving each parent with half of a heart was destroying me. Both of them deserve my whole love as much as I deserve theirs.

I used to be scared of showing dad that I loved mum because I was scared he’d get upset because of his feelings towards her. And I was scared to tell mum that I loved dad because I was scared she’d get upset because of how she feels about him. But I’ve finally reached a point where the divorce is old news and the explosive fire has calmed down, and I’ve regained a sense of child-like entitlement. They are my parents and unfortunately they chose each other when they decided to have me, so I'm allowed to love my mum and my dad no matter how much it may sting them to see me loving the “bad parent”.

When my mum sent me a WhatsApp saying that she couldn’t board the plane, I rang my dad with my eyes full of tears and this moment felt like everything had come full circle. I could lean on one of my parents while I was hurting for the other one. There were no more “bad parents”.

As I grow older and get closer to becoming a mother myself, I see how much I’ve demanded from my parents in my head. I never voiced these needs apart from “I wish you’d call me more” or “I wish you’d ask me about my life” but as they both reach the age of sixty, I feel like I no longer need them as parent figures caring for a small defenceless child. Our relationship has transformed into a feeling of wanting to take care of them and allow them into my established adult life and my own sacred family.

I no longer see my parents as authority figures that are above me or that can punish me and demand things from me. Nowadays, I see them as the two people that came together for whatever reason, created me and raised me. I see them as people I share a past with and to be honest, love deeply.

Last Friday, while I held my phone in my shaking hand, reading “can’t come” pop up in the WhatsApp chat, I felt all of my excitement plummet. It was definite that my mum wasn’t coming to visit me. I cried and I released feelings that were lodged in my stomach and deep chest. I felt the pain in my lungs and I cried it all out until I was empty. At that very moment, I became aware of how excited I was to spend time with my mum, make her coffee in the morning, go on long walks with her in the countryside and spend time with her in the allotment.

Sometimes life slams doors in our faces to place a mirror in front of us instead. In this case, I was given the opportunity of calling my dad for his support with something regarding my mum, and I was also shown how much my heart has healed and is ready to step into this new found love for both of my divorced parents.

Mum, dad, thank you for everything. I guess I need to call you before you read this.