My Original Role

How Daughterhood Shapes the Way I Love

Before I was anything else, I was a daughter. That role taught me how to love and how to care. It also taught me how to disappear. This reflection looks back at what I learned in that role, how it shaped me, and what it means to keep loving my parents while no longer losing myself in the process.

Before I was a mother, before I was a wife, before I was a psychologist, I was a daughter.

That role shaped everything: who I am, how I love, how I respond when someone else is hurting. My parents were loving and generous. I grew up with all my needs met, and most of my wants too. Still, they were deeply impacted by pain of their own, and quietly, that pain trickled down to me. I spent much of my early life trying to protect them. Not consciously, at first. I just sensed what shouldn’t be felt. What couldn’t be said. I kept their secrets before I had words for secrecy. I padded their pain without even knowing that’s what I was doing.

It’s only after years of therapy and reflection that I see it clearly now.

Through a lot of hard work, and with a lot of support, I’ve spent the last few years learning to protect myself instead of them. I’ve been learning to let go of the version of daughterhood that required silence, vigilance, and self-erasure. That has meant sharing more of my history. And ultimately, it has meant sharing their secrets along with my own.

My biggest hesitation about the possibility of publishing my memoir is that I will share their secrets with the world. My younger self winces at the idea. But my healthy adult self knows that keeping secrets kept me sick for many years.

So now I am trying to find a new way to care for them. Because, to be honest, the urge to care for them is still powerful. And in this season of their lives, they need more care, and they need it in new ways.

I believe my mom has undiagnosed dementia. My dad, too, is deep in cognitive decline. Watching them lose parts of themselves is both heartbreaking and, somehow, endearing. I find myself softening. Letting go of old hurts even as I begin to name them. Because the more I understand my own wounds, the more I recognize theirs. And the less I blame them, the more I feel for them.

This is the paradox I carry now: I want to tell the truth about my life, about what it was like to grow up in a home filled with both love and secrets. But I also love them. I don’t want to hurt them. I still want to protect them. Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like if they ever read my words. If they’d feel seen or betrayed. If they’d understand the difference between blame and honesty. If they’d see that even the truths I used to be ashamed to name also carry my love.

I recently visited them in their new senior living community. We didn’t talk much. They do less talking now. It was painful, and it was meaningful. We sat on the bed together and snuggled while watching Jeopardy. Yes, I still snuggle my mom. In those moments, she still feels like my mommy. I helped with their prescriptions. Shared a meals with them. Sat with them in the slowness of it all.

Our roles are shifting now. I love them as a daughter, but they are not exactly my parents anymore. And I’m not exactly their daughter, at least not in the way I once was.

I’m back to protecting them, but in new ways. Ways that feel appropriate. Even as I start to let go of the secrets, I am caring for them as best I can. It’s where I want to be. I just do it differently now. In a way that doesn’t compromise myself.

I’ve learned I can care for them and still care for myself. I can love them and still carry hurt. Those things can live side by side. I’m still their daughter, just not the kind who disappears to keep the peace. And in some ways, that feels like the most loving and connected version yet.