What do I do when my parents feel disappointed in me?

It has always been difficult for me to sit with the feeling of disappointing my parents. And there are countless times where disappointment has happened, simply because neither them nor I had the courage to stare my truth in the face. 

• I didn’t have the drive or dedication to be at any of the IITs. I had no understanding of why that was such a big deal 
• Languages and writing were perhaps my biggest strengths—still are—and all of us chose to think of them as if they were extracurriculars and not the main main thing
• I had issues with bullying (being and doing), stammering, losing or gaining weight—all of those were linked to struggling with where I was and my environment 
• I was/am an emotional eater, and a lot of my body images issues have been aggravated by it. My parents didn’t know how to package it to me, so we put me in a cycle of denying food and then binge eating

And so on. 

Even if I felt at a deeper level that I was struggling or overwhelmed, the narrative of “being weak” was super powerful; if I asked for help or made known my struggles, it would make my own family think of me as weak. Or worse, my parents would feel that they weren’t raising their child to be a gladiator but a weakling. 

Also, we were immigrants in the Middle East. 

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Today as I look back, I see how my parents were in over their heads too. They had left their safe spaces in an attempt to build a better life, which was not going according to plan. And that tends to erode people’s self-esteem. They were only in their late 30s then—an age that I am at now—and I am still reeling from my childhood. 

They did what they thought was best, as per the conventional wisdom of those days. It led to a lot of disappointment in any case. We were living in a brittle environment, walking on eggshells and constantly disappointing each other. 

A few things that have been staring me in the face as I process my childhood: 

1. How parents speak to their kids becomes their inner narrative. I am recovering from this even as I write today. 
2. Your parents will never be who you want them to be, and there will be grief around it because that’s a part of your life that will never come back. 
3. The relationship between siblings also changes when they leave home. Away from the parenting, they make sense of the new world and build their mental formations, and often, there’s a lot of emotional distance that creeps in between siblings even when they were brought up in the same environment. 
4. Children can’t always tell that they are struggling or overwhelmed, but there will be signs of breakdown. It’s on the parents to figure that out. And even if they do that after the storm has passed and they attempt to repair it, that still counts.
5. We rarely, if ever, go to therapy or practice inner work to beat our pasts and traumas. We can’t. It’s always going to be within us. I believe we do all that to learn to find joy in what we have alongside the trauma and the heartbreak. 

So today, at 37, what do I do when my parents feel disappointed in me? 

1. I read and listen to a lot of Thich Naht Hahn’s short teachings and videos. I am sharing one here that makes a lot of sense in my context. Hungry Ghosts by Thich Naht Hahn
2. Guided meditations for forgiveness and loving kindness. Very often, I struggle with sending love to myself, or forgiving myself; willing myself to sit with that struggle or that boredom during meditation has helped me stay still when a storm is brewing around me. 
3. I have taught myself over time that I can’t rescue them from what they are feeling—that the savior complex is somewhere in the past, or at least most of it is. It tends to rear up sometimes and I just look at it, and tell it to chill (I really do).
4. I do art and dance practice with myself. I put on some music that I love feeling, and I dance or paint to it—I cry a lot when that happens—and then I feel better. I don’t feel disappointed about disappointing my parents 
5. I let it wash over me. If there’s a tirade from their end, or if there’s some emotional engagement, I just don’t engage. The best that they get from me is a “hmmm.” It’s been so tough. But it’s been worth it.

It’s going to happen—this cycle of disappointing each other.

Perhaps what matters more is not letting those disappointments make us think less of ourselves, and of our parents.