"My daughter said these words quietly, almost as if she didn't want me to hear them. But I did. And the moment I did, something in my chest cracked open. I knew that feeling. I'd carried it my entire childhood. We were in the kitchen; I sat on the floor and pulled her next to me. My mind racing while I tried to keep my focus on her, eyes full of compassion, as if I could pull her inside me to protect her from all harm."
"In so many aspects, he was a fantastic role model. I worshipped him. But humans don't go through life unscathed-that's how we grow. And beneath all the qualities I admired, there was something I internalized without even knowing it: his approval was always just slightly out of reach. Not because he was cruel. Not because he didn't love me. But because the bar kept moving. Because his attention went elsewhere-to work, to stress, to whatever consumed him in that moment."
A parent hears her daughter say, "I can't do anything right," and immediately recognizes the same deep-seated belief carried from her own childhood. She responds with compassion and physical closeness while mentally tracing how she unconsciously recreated the dynamic she once vowed to avoid. Her father provided many admirable qualities—resilience, integrity, independence—yet his approval felt perpetually out of reach because his attention was often elsewhere. That shifting bar of approval fostered performance and self-doubt, and those internalized patterns surfaced again in her relationship with her child.
Read at Tiny Buddha
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