I’m sharing this not as an indictment of my parent’s parenting but rather mine as something I would share with my sons. One of the most difficult things for children to understand is the complexity of being a parent today. Children don’t understand what their parent might be going through at work or in their marriage nor should they, but life is made up of ordinary days and sometimes parents have a hard time keeping their adult world from harming their children. Hopefully, as children grow older they have more grace to lend to their parents.

Allison Ayres writes “dear Mom and Dad, thank you for the hard lessons. Thank you for creating me. Thank you for being who you were or weren’t to me.” Source: Dear Mom and Dad, Thank You for the Years of Trauma – Tiny Buddha