Caring for Aging Parents Who Didn’t Care for You
Years ago, a journalist (we’ll call her Nancy) requested an interview with me to discuss common caregiving issues for an article she was writing. We bonded during our chat, and Nancy shared some of her own experiences of trying to cope with her aging parents’ needs. In addition to notoriously difficult care decisions, like determining whether Dad should stop driving or if Mom needs more help at home, Nancy was also struggling with years and years of toxic family history.
Initially, she felt that her experience was unusual. After all, we mostly hear about family caregivers who are forced to choose between their careers and quality time with their spouses, children and friends when parents’ needs begin increasing. What Nancy didn’t know—and many caregivers don’t—is that countless adult children grapple with the impossible decision of whether to care for parents who were unsupportive, neglectful and/or downright abusive.
A Daughter’s Attempt to Reconcile a History of Abuse: As we talked, Nancy described the inner turmoil she was facing as her parents got older. She grew up with a physically and emotionally abusive mother, and her father had been gone much of the time, doing what most men of that generation did: working to support his family. Therefore, he wasn’t around to “interfere” with the raising of the children.
Nancy had spent years in therapy learning to cope with her childhood issues. Through hard work, she learned to forgive her father for his lack of involvement and the fact that he didn’t put a stop to the abuse her mother doled out. She’d learned that he likely didn’t know about a lot of what went on in his absence and that he was probably in denial about what he did suspect because he really didn’t know what to do about it.
Although he failed to protect her, Nancy extended forgiveness, primarily because her father acknowledged where he fell short. They formed a bond and he became a terrific grandfather to her children. As he aged…
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