I Know What I Gave

When You Stop Putting Your Love on Trial

By Lisa Franco Alexander

There comes a point in some estranged relationships when you realize you have spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to prove something you already know.

That you loved them.

That you cared.

That you tried.

That you were there.

Were you perfect?

Of course not.

Neither were our parents. Neither will our children be. None of us gets through decades of loving another human being without making mistakes, saying the wrong thing, missing something we should have seen, or wishing we could go back and handle a moment differently.

But somewhere along the way, for many estranged parents and alienated grandparents, imperfection begins to feel like evidence. One mistake becomes a character judgment.

One painful period seems to swallow twenty years. A disagreement becomes a definition of who you are. And sometimes it feels as though the ending of the relationship has reached backward and rewritten everything that came before it.

So you start defending yourself.

You explain what you meant.

You replay conversations.

You search old messages.

You remember birthdays and Christmas mornings and school mornings. Scraped knees. Fevers. Homework. Practices. Games. Doctor appointments. Meals. Laundry. Rides. Worries. Sacrifices.

You remember the thousand ordinary things nobody else saw.

And you wonder: How can none of this count?

Maybe you should apologize again. Maybe you should explain it differently.

Maybe there are better words. Maybe if you could just make them understand your heart, something would change.

And that can go on for years. Until one day you are exhausted from trying to prove your heart to someone who has already decided what it meant.

There is a painful truth in that place:

You cannot explain yourself into someone else's understanding.

We Really Did Try to Do Better

I think there is something especially difficult about estrangement for those of us who entered parenthood determined to do some things differently. Many of us grew up in generations where children were expected to adjust to the adults around them.

Some of us were spanked.

Some were yelled at.

Some learned very early not to talk about feelings.

Some had loving parents who still carried their own wounds and limitations.

Some had childhoods that left scars we promised ourselves our own children would never have to carry.

So when we became parents, we tried.

We showed up.

Our calendars became their calendars.

Practices. Games. School activities. Appointments. Birthday parties. Friends. Homework. Holidays.

We worried about their happiness and their confidence. We wanted them to have opportunities we didn't have. We wanted them to know they were loved.

We remembered what had hurt us and tried not to repeat it.

Did we get everything right?

No.

Sometimes, in trying so hard not to make our parents' mistakes, we probably created entirely different ones. That's the uncomfortable part of breaking generational patterns that doesn't get talked about enough.

Trying to do better did not make us perfect.

But it mattered that we tried.

And one of the deepest wounds of estrangement can be discovering that the parent you believed you were is not the parent your adult child says they experienced.

That hurts in a place I don't think people outside estrangement can possibly understand.

Because you aren't only grieving the relationship. Sometimes you begin grieving your own understanding of your life.

Was I Too Much—or Not Enough?

Then comes the endless accounting.

Was I too involved?

Or not involved enough?

Too protective?

Not protective enough?

Too strict?

Too permissive?

Did I help too much?

Should I have done more?

Did I call too often?

Should I have called more?

Should I have spoken up?

Should I have kept my mouth shut?

You can drive yourself half crazy with those questions because there is no time machine waiting at the end of them.

There are things I would do differently today. I think any parent who has lived long enough and is willing to be truthful can say that. There are things I know now that I didn't know then.

There were times I was wrong.

There were times I was absolutely doing the best I knew how to do with the person I was, the circumstances I was living in, and the information I had at the time.

Both are true.

And maybe that is where we need to stop dividing ourselves into two impossible categories:

Good parent. Bad parent.

Human beings are more complicated than that. Families certainly are.

I can take responsibility for what belongs to me without accepting responsibility for everything. I can regret something without turning my entire life into a regret. I can acknowledge another person's pain without agreeing that their pain is the complete definition of me.

And I can say I was a loving parent without claiming I was a perfect one.

Nobody Saw the Tuesdays

This is the part I keep coming back to.

The Tuesdays. Nobody remembers the Tuesdays.

Not the birthday parties or Christmas mornings or graduations when everybody had a camera out.

Just an ordinary Tuesday.

Dinner had to be made.

Someone needed to be picked up.

Someone couldn't find something.

Someone was upset.

Someone needed money for school tomorrow that they somehow forgot to mention until 9:00 at night.

There were conversations in cars and stupid jokes and arguments and hugs and slammed doors and television shows and laundry and groceries and a million little pieces of family life that nobody outside your home ever witnessed.

There were nights you worried.

Times you rearranged your plans.

Things you went without.

Things you probably did that your children never even knew you did.

Not because you were keeping score.

Because you were their parent.

Those ordinary days became years.

Those years became a family history.

Estrangement is part of that history now.

But estrangement does not get to travel backward through time and erase everything that existed before it. The ending does not get to rewrite every page.

I know what I lived.

I know where I failed.

I know where I tried.

And I know what I gave.

I Don't Want to Live in the Courtroom Anymore

Estrangement can become a courtroom inside your own head.

You are the defendant, the attorney and the witness.

And somehow court is always in session.

You present your evidence.

You prepare your defense.

You rehearse what you would say if you ever had the chance.

You imagine the conversation where everything is finally understood.

Maybe you write the long message and delete it.

Maybe you send it.

Maybe you ask what someone has heard about you.

Maybe you hear something that isn't true and become desperate to correct it.

I understand that desperation.

When someone you love has a version of you that you don't recognize, of course you want to defend yourself.

But how long can a person live like that?

At some point, I think we have to walk out of the courtroom.

Not because nothing happened.

Not because we don't have anything to answer for.

And certainly not because we stopped caring.

But because there may never be a verdict that gives us back our peace.

Maybe there is something else we can say instead.

I know my heart.

Not:

I was perfect.

Not:

I never hurt anyone.

Not:

Everything was their fault.

Just:

I know my heart.

I know what I gave.

I know what I would change.

I know what I cannot change.

And I am no longer willing to spend every remaining year of my life trying to prove that I was worthy of being loved.

Loving Them Does Not Mean Chasing Them

This may be one of the hardest things an estranged parent or alienated grandparent ever has to learn.

You can love someone without chasing them.

You can leave the door open without spending your entire life standing in the doorway.

You can hope for reconciliation without making reconciliation the price of your own happiness.

That is not abandonment. It is not indifference. And it does not mean you suddenly stopped missing them.

You may miss them terribly. You may have a wonderful morning and cry that afternoon.

You may laugh until your stomach hurts and later see something in a store that brings the grief rushing back so quickly you can barely breathe. You may celebrate a holiday and still know exactly who is missing from the room.

That's grief.

But somewhere along the way, many of us started believing that continuing to suffer was somehow proof that we continued to love. It isn't.

Guilt is not proof of love.

You are allowed to laugh again.

You are allowed to travel.

You are allowed to make plans.

You are allowed to meet new people.

You are allowed to have an entire day when estrangement isn't the first thought in the morning and the last thought before sleep.

You are allowed to discover parts of yourself that have nothing to do with being someone's mother, father or grandparent.

You are allowed to live.

And none of that means you love them one ounce less.

The Door Can Stay Open

I don't believe finding peace requires locking the door. For some people, perhaps it does.

There is no right answer here. Only yours. But for those of us who still carry hope, I think there is another possibility.

The door can stay open. We just don't have to sleep beside it. That difference matters.

Hope can have a place in our lives without occupying all of it. Love can remain without pursuit. Grief can remain without becoming our identity. And if reconciliation comes one day, we can meet that day when it arrives.

But today is already here. And we are still here too.

There are people still here to love.

There are places we haven't seen.

There are conversations we haven't had.

There is laughter we haven't heard yet.

There are mornings we haven't awakened to.

There may even be dreams we haven't dreamed yet because we have spent so long staring at the one thing we cannot change.

I don't want grief to take those things too.

The Heart Doesn't Only Grieve One Way

There is another kind of pain I have come to understand.

Sometimes what breaks our hearts isn't only losing someone.

Sometimes it is realizing that the love, care, loyalty, or tenderness we so naturally gave was not something another person was able—or willing—to give back.

And that loss can happen in so many ways.

A death can leave us aching for one more conversation.

A friendship can disappear after decades.

A marriage can end while love is still tangled inside it.

A family can fracture.

Someone we love can become ill and slowly become someone we can no longer reach in the same way.

A child can walk away.

A grandchild can suddenly become inaccessible.

Sometimes there is a funeral. Sometimes there isn't.

But the heart knows something is missing.

And for those of us who love deeply, there can be another question underneath the grief:

Who holds me while I am carrying all of this?

Many of us became very good at being the one who remembered.

The one who checked in. The one who noticed. The one who showed up.

The one who worried long after everyone else had gone to sleep.

The one who kept giving because loving people was simply part of who we were.

There is nothing wrong with having that kind of heart.

But there is something I wish more of us understood sooner:

Having an enormous capacity to love does not require giving everyone unlimited access to it.

You don't have to become hard because somebody hurt you.

You don't have to stop loving because someone died.

You don't have to stop caring because someone left.

You don't have to erase someone from your heart simply because they are no longer part of your everyday life.

But you do have to remember that you are one of the people your love is supposed to reach.

Maybe that is part of renewal too. Not becoming someone who loves less.

Learning, finally, to include yourself among the people worthy of the love you have spent a lifetime giving away.

I Know What I Gave

Maybe peace doesn't begin when they return. Maybe it doesn't begin with an apology.

Maybe nobody ever says the words we have imagined hearing a thousand times.

Maybe peace begins much more quietly than that.

Maybe it begins when we stop requiring someone else's understanding before we allow ourselves to live.

When we can finally say:

I made mistakes.

I have regrets.

I have learned.

I would do some things differently.

I loved deeply.

I still love deeply.

And I am still here.

We don't have to deny the empty chair.

We stop allowing the empty chair to become the whole room.

That chair may always matter. The person who should be sitting there may always matter.

But there is an entire room around it. And there is still a life inside that room. Including yours.

When Grief Has Nowhere to Go

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Heart's Renewal

Heard · Held · Not Alone

Peace · Purpose · Wholeness