Why Do Parents Reject Their Children? Understanding my dad’s pain and my own healing

"You are not broken. You are injured. And injuries can heal."-Pete Walker

As a child, I had no understanding of why a parent would reject a son or daughter. Nothing about it made sense to my little heart. Becoming a parent myself has given me a little more wisdom and a softer lens for why things like this happen.

To reject means to throw away or to cast back. As humans, we tend to discard what we do not enjoy and to push away what reminds us of a painful season. When I think about the rejection I received from my dad, my first thought was that he rejected me and my siblings because we were not worthy of his love and attention. For years, I believed that the new family he chose with his new wife was more suitable for him.

A few years later, that relationship came to an end. I was left with more questions than answers. Why did they separate? What happened to the children he once cared for and the wife who seemed more suitable for him? I never found the full answer, but I did begin to learn something important about my dad.

I began to see that he was deeply wounded and that his pain reached back into his childhood. My father prefers not to discuss his past. He is guarded and will only share a handful of details. Even that little bit is enough for me to see that the boy inside him went through things he still has not healed from.

Over time, I learned that he did not reject me because I was unworthy. He rejected me because of his own unhealed wounds. There is an old saying that hurt people hurt people. We often assume that once a person becomes a parent, it clears away every wound they have faced. That is far from the truth. Many parents are still carrying pain from their own homes and childhoods, even while they are raising children of their own.

Loving a wounded parent is not easy. It may mean accepting that they may never become the parent you longed for, while still choosing to honor the fact that they are human. It can look like setting healthy boundaries and refusing to tolerate abuse. Sometimes love is a short, peaceful phone call instead of a long, painful one. Sometimes love is prayer from a distance.

If you want to keep this pain from reaching the next generation, your own healing matters. Pay attention to what triggers you with your children and notice when you shut down or overreact.

Be honest about the ways you repeat what hurt you. Seek help through counseling, community, or safe friends. Journal your story so that you can name and release the hurt on paper and grieve what you did not receive, instead of passing those same wounds on.

If you want more support from people who are trained in this work, one helpful resource on YouTube is “How to Heal from Childhood Trauma or Complex PTSD,” which you can find at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUHMSrJrjss. It offers simple insight into how to begin moving toward healing.

A Note to Daddy ( a snippet from my journal entry)

Dear Daddy,

This writing is not an attempt to bash you. I spent one chapter of my life doing that repeatedly in my mind. Instead, it is my way of walking through the healing process, the best way I know, which is writing. I see the pages I journal on as a refiner's fire that burns up the hurt and turns the ashes into renewed peace and hope that I can share with others.

Daddy, I pray that one day my words will find you so that you can heal, too.

A hopeful daughter

I am not an expert in trauma, and I do not have degrees or titles in this field. I am simply a woman who is still healing her inner child from wounds that her father also carried as a child. My story is a reminder that if we do not face our pain, the next generation will be the one to carry it. Proverbs says, In all your getting, get understanding. To me, understanding means being willing to stand in the midst of a thing, close enough to see it more clearly, even from the other person’s view. When we choose to do the hard work of healing from that place, we can lift our pain to God and offer our children and grandchildren a different legacy, rooted in truth, love, and wholeness.

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