When a Parent Was Not Safe — Naming It as an Adult
Day 24 of the 30-day Relationships Series.
This is one of the hardest and most freeing pieces of adult work. Naming, honestly, what a parent was and was not — and letting that named reality reorganize how you carry them, how you carry yourself, and how you love others.
Not every parent could keep their child safe. Some were angry. Some were absent. Some were addicted. Some were mentally ill and untreated. Some were simply too wounded themselves to hold anyone. That is not the child's fault. It never was.
You were not too much. You were not too sensitive. You were a child with a parent who could not hold you. Grieving that is not disloyalty. It is the beginning of freedom.
What Naming It Does
Names the truth your body has always known. Nervous systems remember. The knowing has been there. Naming it is not making it up.
Releases you from carrying their part. Children of unsafe parents often internalize the parent's failures as their own. Naming it puts responsibility where it belongs.
Interrupts the pattern. Unnamed patterns get repeated. Named ones become choices.
Grieves what you did not get. This is a real grief, and it deserves to be felt. Not skipped over. Not minimized with "other people had it worse."
Frees you to actually love your parent, if you choose to and if it is safe. Loving from a place of illusion is not real love. Loving from the truth, if the relationship can hold it, is.
What Naming It Is Not
It is not blame. Blame is a stuck posture. Naming is a truth posture.
It is not permission to be cruel to the parent. What you name in yourself is not a script for how you speak to them.
It is not the end of the relationship. Sometimes it is. Often it is a reshaping.
It is not disloyalty. It is honesty. Loyalty to a lie is not loyalty. It is self-abandonment.
Contact, No Contact, or Something in Between
Adults who name a parent's failures land in a range of relational stances. All of them can be right for the right person at the right time.
Full contact with new boundaries. You keep the relationship. You also stop pretending. You limit topics. You set exit rules. You leave the visit early if a line is crossed.
Low contact. Holidays, birthdays, medical crises. Not the ongoing weekly rhythm you used to have.
No contact. Sometimes necessary. Not the first move. When it is the right move, it is the right move.
Estrangement with an open door. "I am not in contact right now. I love you from a distance. If things change, I am open to a conversation." This is a valid, hard position.
You are allowed to change your stance over time. You are allowed to be one thing for a year and another thing the next year. This is not a life sentence you are pronouncing on the relationship. It is a way of navigating a hard reality.
The Work Underneath
The real work of naming a parent's failures is not primarily about the parent. It is about you.
Reparenting yourself. Learning to offer yourself, and receive from safer people, what your parent could not offer.
Interrupting the pattern with your own children if you have them. The dominant reason people become the parent they had is that they never named what they had.
Choosing a partner from a place of health, not from a nervous system that expected chaos or neglect.
Individual therapy, ideally with someone trained in complex trauma, attachment work, or IFS.
Sometimes writing an unsent letter. Not to be delivered. To be written and burned or filed.
A Word on Siblings
Siblings often disagree about the parent. One remembers the good times more sharply. Another remembers the harm more sharply. Both are often true. Both remembered accurately. Different children lived different childhoods inside the same house.
You do not have to make your siblings agree with your reality. You do have to stop letting their disagreement make you doubt yours.
Whole-Person Steps
Name it in one sentence, honestly. Even alone. "My mother could not hold me." "My father was not safe." "I raised myself in that house."
Grieve what you did not get. This is real grief. It deserves the time.
Choose your stance for now — full contact with new rules, low contact, no contact. It does not have to be forever.
Get a good trauma-informed therapist. This is not solo work.
Interrupt the pattern with your own children, your own friends, your own partner. Nothing heals the past like living the present differently.
If You Are in Utah
At Integrative Mind Body Psychiatry, I walk this work with people. Trauma-informed, whole-person, honest. Telehealth for adults, adolescents, and women in hormonal transitions across Utah. Insurance accepted through Headway (headway.co/providers/beth-makar).
Tomorrow: Day 25 — Making Friends After 30 Is Real Work — and Real Medicine.
This post is educational and is not a substitute for individualized medical, mental-health, or trauma-focused care.
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