Someone shared with me recently that her elderly father had sent her a very accusatory email. Some of the things he had written were deeply unkind, and she was understandably hurt.
She came to me partly because she knew that I had cared for my own father until the end, despite the cruelty I had experienced from him over many years. He never apologised or really expressed gratitude, and our relationship did not suddenly become tender simply because he was old and ailing. She wanted to know how I had continued to serve him despite all of that.
Words can hurt whoever they come from, but they seem to find a different place inside us when they come from a parent. We may be fully grown, with lives, children and responsibilities of our own, and yet a few words can make us feel very small again.
I asked her to think about her father’s life.
What had shaped him? What had he lived through?
Her voice softened. She told me how he’d had a hard life and especially, that, as a child, he’d lacked love.
And there it was.
It did not make the email less unkind. It did not make his accusations true. But it helped her to see that the words had come from somewhere. Long before they arrived in her inbox, they had been forming through his own experiences, disappointments, fears and wounds.
People who have not received enough love do not always become more loving. Sometimes they do. Sometimes the absence of love makes them determined that nobody else should experience the same thing. But sometimes the wound is simply passed on, usually to those closest to them.
My guru, Om Swami ji has taught me a great deal about conditioning: the impressions we gather, the habits we repeat and the stories we tell ourselves until they begin to look like the truth. When someone has lived inside the same story for decades, it can become very difficult for them to see another one.
Understanding this can give us compassion. But compassion does not mean agreeing with everything somebody says, nor does it mean quietly accepting cruelty because the person is old, wounded or related to us.
We have to look honestly at ourselves.
Is there any truth in what has been said? Have we behaved badly? Have we acted without kindness? If we have, then we should acknowledge it and put it right. Our conduct is our responsibility.
If we examine ourselves sincerely and know that the accusations are unfair, we do not have to carry them simply because they came from somebody we love.
I said something else to her that I have learnt through meditation, especially as she is a meditation practitioner too:
Thoughts come at us constantly, and with practice we learn that we do not have to follow every one of them. We notice them and let them drop.
Perhaps we can learn to do the same with other people’s thoughts too. When somebody says or writes something to us, sometimes they have simply opened a little window into the clutter of their own mind. We do not have to take every thought that comes through that window and make it ours.
Sometimes it is their pain speaking. Sometimes it is fear, disappointment or a lifetime of conditioning.
We cannot spend our lives trying to rewrite ourselves in somebody else’s mind.
In His teachings, Swami ji so often brings us back to our own mind and our own conduct. We cannot control what another person thinks, says or does. Their karma is theirs and ours lies in how we respond.
That does not mean becoming numb. It means allowing ourselves to feel the hurt without letting the hurt decide our next action.
Sometimes the wisest response is a calm one, or a firm but short one. Sometimes no response is needed until the heat has passed.
I’ve learned that trying to convince someone of your innocence by overexplaining is fruitless. Their mind is already made up, and your desperation to fix everything, even if it’s well-intentioned, is seen as defensive and only stokes the fire.
Sometimes love needs the protection of silence and distance.
Forgiveness and boundaries are not opposites. We can understand someone’s wounds without allowing those wounds to keep becoming ours. We can love an ageing parent without surrendering our peace every time they are unable to manage their own pain.
Perhaps part of growing older ourselves is beginning to see our parents not only as our parents, but as human beings with their own unfinished stories. We can feel compassion for what they endured while also grieving what they were unable to give us.
Both can be true.
We can understand without excusing, forgive without returning to the same pattern, and remain soft without remaining unprotected.
We may never receive the apology, understanding or love we once hoped for. But perhaps, when we begin to see the wound behind the words, we become free — not to tolerate more hurt, but to stop carrying it, and most importantly, to stop passing it on.
🧡