My friends, I'm here today to help you if you have a parent who has disowned you. And this could apply in other situations too, but the specific situation I want to talk about is how to forgive a parent who disowned you.
Having a parent who disowned you, who said things like "you're dead to me," who refused to talk to you for the rest of your life, can be very painful. I'm familiar with this — not for myself, but through my mother.
My mother's parents told her she was dead to them
My mother's parents chose to disown her. They didn't talk to her. Maybe my grandpa had the tiniest minute or two of conversation, but they told her, you're dead to us. They asked her to choose between my dad and them. She chose my dad and she went in the army. And they said, you're dead to us. They proceeded to not have a relationship with her for the last 20 years — more than 20 years — of their lives. The last time I saw them was 1994, which is the last time my mom saw them as well.
So this was a painful experience for everybody in the family to deal with. Obviously, definitely for my mom, but for everybody else involved too. This was a tough experience for all of us. So I had this conversation with my mom, which I'm sharing here with you now to give you the benefit of the experience.
How the rift happened
My mom has obviously been very hurt a lot of times over her parents disowning her. She had a pretty nice childhood growing up — my grandfather was an engineer at Ford, and they were materially provided for. Unfortunately, though, the relationship as they grew into adulthood just didn't happen. So my mom was very hurt over being disowned.
And I'll tell you the situation. My mom had a husband that her parents really liked, who was very abusive to her, lied to her, maybe cheated on her, and threatened to kill her. And my mom's parents put on this huge wedding for that husband. They liked that husband. And my mom finally decided to get out of that abusive relationship and get a divorce.
So when she did that, she ended up with my dad. And when she ended up with my dad, she got pregnant while she was still in the relationship — or, she hadn't technically gotten divorced yet. They were waiting for the papers. And my dad was an alcoholic, drug addict, sex addict, and a gambler. He was consistently getting thrown out of his house, and not reliable in terms of earning income. My mom quit her job because she was pregnant with me, and it was way too much to work as a veterinarian at the racetrack while she was pregnant. So my mom quit her job when she gave birth to me, and she moved in with my dad's parents.
And once she moved in with my dad's parents, that ended up being tough for her parents to deal with. And then my mom didn't know how to provide any other way than to go in the army. So she went in the army, and was then looking at moving with me down to Texas. My dad was going to meet us down there because he'd been kicked out of his house.
And at some point in this equation, my mom's parents said, it's either your husband — so my dad — it's either us or them, one of the two. They wanted her to just rely on them instead of relying on my dad's parents, and not go in the army, and stay there and be with them. So she said, no, I'm not doing that. I'm not giving up my husband. So they said, you're dead to us, that's it.
And they visited a couple of times. They ended up getting thrown off the military base where my mom was stationed. And then it led to, in 1994, we came to visit, they had some huge fight, and that was it. No more talking, no more anything at that point. The relationship was over. So my mom didn't get to have a relationship with her parents for the rest of her life. And she was, as you can understand, quite pained over it.
There's a way you can forgive your parents
So I was talking to her about this as she was reflecting on the hurt she was experiencing as a result of being treated this way by her parents. And what I told her is, I said, Mom, there's a way you can forgive your parents. There's a way you can make this into a good thing. She's like, well, how's that?
I said, Mom, the whole life — if your parents hadn't done what they did, you wouldn't have gotten to have this entire life experience that you got to have. My mom had a 20-year career in the army where she got up to the rank of colonel. She loved what she did and was very good at it, being a veterinarian in the army. And we lived all over the world. We had a very adventurous life, going to all these different places around the world.
Our entire life happened the way it did because of how my mom's parents treated her. We wouldn't have gotten to have this entire life if her parents had actually been there and been what you would think of as good parents. We got to have this life of traveling around the world, of my mom being in the military. We got to have a very interesting and exciting and adventurous life because my mom went in the army. If her parents hadn't cut her off, if her parents hadn't acted the way they acted, we would have all had an entirely different life.
And I told my mom, you can be grateful your parents cut you off, because that gave us the chance to have the life we got to have. Because of your parents acting the way they did, we got to live the way we did. If her parents hadn't cut her off, she would have ended up staying in Michigan, and we would have not gone into the military. I'd probably still be in Michigan today. So I helped my mom see that her parents cutting us off, in a lot of ways, actually gave us the chance to have the entire life that we're having today. If they hadn't done that, we would have had a whole different life. I share these kinds of conversations more in my Life playlist, where I work through this stuff out loud.
Finding gratitude for what looks like a tragedy
So what really helps in life is when you can find a way to be grateful for the things that you might think of as tragedies — like somebody getting cut off by their parents. You might think of this as purely bad, purely a tragedy, purely wrong. Well, there were a lot of positive parts to this happening. And the positive part was that we got to have an entirely different life.
You can come back to the basic idea that if you're grateful for the life you have today, everything in the past ends up being valuable experience. If your parents cut you off, and however they mistreated you, the justice is in the healing. The justice is in appreciating exactly where you're at today. We got to have the life we had because of how my mom's parents treated us. And yes, it was hard, but the justice is in the healing. We are all healed, we're all whole. If you're carrying a heavy loss right now, I wrote more about this in my guide to healing after heartache and dealing with tragedy.
It's funny — when I'm telling this story I sometimes get my mom and my wife confused. But the point holds: we got to have the life we had because of how my mom's parents treated us. And my mom has learned something from all of it. My mom really treasures the relationship she has with me and with my brother, because she didn't get to have a relationship with her parents as an adult.
Turn the story around
So the miraculous thing to do is to turn the story of "my parents were horrible, my parents shouldn't have done this, my parents shouldn't have treated me this way" around into: well, what opportunities did you have because of that? So much of the pain we carry comes from the way we've been hurt, and it helps to remember that hurt people hurt people — your parents were very likely passing on their own wounds.
I've read so many inspiring books and seen so many inspiring stories. For example, if you look up the book Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins — he got to be a Navy SEAL. And one reason he was able to be a Navy SEAL is because his father was so brutal to him and beat him so much growing up that he could handle the pain of being a Navy SEAL. Somebody like me might not have been able to be a Navy SEAL, because I didn't get beaten like that. I got spanked and hit occasionally, but I didn't have that brutal upbringing.
And my mom — we got to have the life we have, which we love. Her parents, essentially, gave us a gift. By cutting us off, they gave us the freedom to go live in the military and have this adventurous life that we never would have had otherwise.
None of this means you have to pretend the hurt didn't happen, or rush back into a relationship that isn't safe. Forgiveness and boundaries can live side by side — I learned that the hard way, and I wrote about one of them in the boundary that finally let me enjoy Christmas Eve. You can be grateful for the life that grew out of the rupture and still hold a line about how you're treated going forward.
So I hope hearing that experience is helpful for you, to appraise your situation and to see a new way to look at things. If you want to talk through your own situation with me and a group of people doing the same kind of inner work, you're welcome to join the Jerry Banfield Family. I love each of you and really appreciate you being here.