Opinion piece by Barbara Lee
When I first walked into a therapist's office, I was convinced I already knew why I was there. I didn't think I needed to be fixed. I didn't want to spend hours picking apart my childhood. I just wanted a better relationship with my parents — something warmer, more honest, more real.
I believed that if I finally understood the past, if I worked through the old wounds and learned to communicate in a healthier way, we'd find our way closer to each other. I pictured a conversation where I could speak openly about what had hurt me, and they would actually listen. Not a dramatic apology. Not tears and grand gestures. Just a little curiosity about what our shared history had felt like from my side.
Therapy was long, painful work
Not because my therapist kept dragging me back into the past, but because I had to slowly face things I'd spent years pushing away. I had to admit to myself that certain experiences had genuinely hurt me. That some gaps can't be filled by telling yourself "every family has its problems." That love and damage can exist in the same place at the same time.
What kept me going through the hardest moments — when I wanted nothing more than to look away and retreat into denial — was a vision. A future version of my life where I finally had an honest, open relationship with my parents. Where they were my closest confidants. Where I could bring them my pain without bracing for impact.
For years, I prepared for the conversation I thought would bring us closer. And maybe that's exactly why it hurt so much when it didn't go the way I'd hoped.
What I got wasn't curiosity. It wasn't dialogue. It wasn't any kind of shared attempt to understand. Instead, there was hurt feelings. Martyrdom. Sentences that made it clear I was expected to comfort them — for having raised the subject at all. As if the problem wasn't what had happened, but the fact that I dared to talk about it.
When that happens, the instinct is to try harder. Maybe I phrased it wrong. Maybe the timing was off. Maybe I need to be more patient. Maybe if I just explain it better...
I did exactly that, for a long time. I kept running the same loop, convinced that this time would be different. That if I was empathetic enough, calm enough, understanding enough, we'd finally arrive somewhere new.
It takes more than one person
Then, slowly, I came to understand something I really didn't want to accept. No relationship can be repaired by just one person. No matter how much I wanted it, I couldn't do someone else's inner work for them. I couldn't take responsibility for things I hadn't done. I couldn't force openness, self-reflection, or willingness to change.
And perhaps the hardest realization of all: just because something is possible doesn't mean it will ever actually happen.
In the end, therapy didn't teach me how to fix the relationship. It taught me how to grieve the version of it I'd always wanted — and let that dream go. That wasn't the outcome I'd signed up for. But in its own quiet way, it made my life better.
Because as long as I was clinging to that fantasy, every visit carried the weight of potential disappointment. Every conversation felt like another chance for a breakthrough — and every failure broke something in me a little more.
When I finally started accepting reality as it actually was, that constant internal war began to ease. Not because it stopped hurting. Not because everything was suddenly fine. And certainly not because anyone was off the hook.
It simply meant I was no longer willing to build my life around the hope that other people would one day change. My parents are who they are. Our relationship is what it is. It may never be as intimate, as deep, or as honest as I once longed for. But today, I no longer feel it's my duty to fix it at any cost.
Sometimes the healthiest decision isn't to keep fighting for a relationship — it's to accept its limits.
What finally brought me peace wasn't changing my parents. It was stopping an impossible task, and accepting that I have to build my life from exactly where I am.
