— " Family without Villains "

I think our parents weren’t monsters—They were people trying to survive with tools they were never taught how to use. They loved in the only language they knew, and many of us spent years translating that love into something we could live with. We don’t blame them. But we won’t pretend it didn’t hurt, fathers never learned gentleness, so they taught endurance instead, mothers gave everything they had, even when what they had wasn’t softness. We were given shelter. We learned safety on our own.

Their pain was carried like a family inheritance, passed down quietly, without consent. We watched them survive and mistook survival for love. They didn’t protect us from everything. They believed strength would.

We don’t resent our parents. We resent the silence that made pain feel normal. We can love them and still grieve what we never received.