In my parent's mind

A reflection on how my parents don't know who I am as an adult

“You’re just not the girl I used to know” my mom said after I tried to talk about inclusivity, immigration, and the growing fear for myself and my clients. This was after my dad and I talked politics. A conversation I had no intention of starting, but inevitably I found myself in. It often starts like this:

-Como va el negocio (how’s the business going)

- Bien, cansado pero bien. Es a veces pesado con todo lo que esta pasando / Good, but hard, it’s pretty heavy with everything going on (Gestures to the air, implying the world in general)

Followed up by the opinion that I let ‘everything that’s going on stress me out’ . I try to explain to my father, the accountant, that these (the current sociopolitical climate) impacts my clients deeply and impacts me (a first gen daughter with a daughter of her own). I then get hit with the doozy

“es que metes mucha politica en tu negocio” / you put too much politics in your practices.

My father had never, in my four years of having my practice, bothered to look at my practice’s website. I explained that the personal is political for me, as it is for a lot of my population. Most good therapist will tell you the personal is political. Well this conversation went in all the directions: immigration, prison abolition, LGBTQI rights, sexual education. All met with what was a dismaying amount of right wing/leaning talking points.

My parents had never discouraged political discourse, at least not between my dad and I. My mom, well she mostly would tell us to stop arguing (which we never were) and would get annoyed and shut down about the topic. But overall, we talked politics quite freely. Religion, though, that hasn’t been talked about until most recently. My parents relegated my religious and spiritual rearing to my Christian schools and Christian universities. We didn’t read the Bible together, we hopped from church to church. God was there, like a benevolent but unobtrusive figure.

Over the years, I have distance myself from the Church. It became an uncomfortable place for me. The hand raising, the altar calls, it felt performative. I felt like a bad Christian if I didn’t have hands laid on me, or raise my hand, or be inspired by the Holy Spirit to go up and publicly show my commitment to my faith. This feeling paired with the very real lack of desire to wake up early on a Sunday kept me away. Now what keeps me away are the Christians themselves. My mom accused me of refusing to let her take my kid to her church because, to quote her, i thought they’d brain wash my kid. I’m not entirely wrong, but I pointed out that belief was influenced by some of the cold things she had said about homeless people and how judgmental she was at times. I told her if that’s how she’s moving in the world I don’t want to go to her church.

(like all kids with complicated relationships with their parents, I want to say, I absolutely adore my mother, she is my ride or die, and her sense of loyalty knows no bounds)

I got hit with the “You’re just not the -insert name- I knew.’ I responded with,” you’ve never bothered to ask, you’ve never asked questions, you’ve just made assumptions about my spiritual life and my relationship with God and Christ, but you’ve never asked.”

There is something saddening to move out of your parents house at age 25, masters degree in one hand, broken engagement in the other, and for them not be suprised that you changed in 18 years. It saddening to have very little understanding of your adult child, but still love them. My parents, don’t know me, and from the sounds of it, they may have never really known me. Because, I have always been this version of me: social justicy, spiritually questioning, ‘if it doesn’t make sense i’m not doing it” kind of person.

With these reflections I wonder, how old am I in their eyes? When did they stop getting to know me? Did they get to know me?