Quitting Parentification: A Chosen Grief

And The Journey For Better Balance In Parental Relationships

Jan 10, 2026

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This is part of the “Mysticism and Healing Alchemy” Series , where we examine transitional spaces in life, dispel expectations, explore authenticity and embrace our righteous selfishness…

It appears that “Parentification” is becoming a bit of a buzz word - she says as she types it herself once more. 🫠

It would make sense, coming from the generations that we’ve had, wouldn’t it?

The old saying of, “we were tough in our day, none of this crying stuff”.

Thanks, Derek, that’s exactly why we’re here, actually.

Parentification, if you didn’t know, is the dynamic of children growing up too soon because of emotional and physical burdens placed on them by their caregivers.

Now, you might argue that most kids experience this, and you’d probably be onto something.

A lot of us were.

And that doesn’t make it ok.

Or any less damaging.

XXXX

What a lot of people (parents and the non-parentified) can’t seem to get their heads around are the monumental wounds left behind from all of this.

When you’re busy just trying to be a kid and attempting to soak up the world in order to see how it fits, you’re met instead with elders shaping you, regardless of who it is you intrinsically are.

Identity cannot only be warped, it can be throttled, ripped, strained and even split.

Leaving behind a person doomed to repeat or doomed to rupture.

Unless, we do the work ourselves, regardless of who is there to hold us or not.

To Who Does Your Inner Compass Point?

A huge sign of Parentification is meeting someone full of “shoulds”.

Someone who, even perhaps despite their loudness, extroversion, wit, intelligence, has formed some of the strictest inner Senior Managers, Time Keepers, Nurses, Spiritual Guides and Secretaries, alllll at the same time - for others, not just themselves.

These inner roles form slowly over time after an impactful, insidious and invasive effect on a person’s development that should never have happened and that will never miraculously go away.

I’ll give you a couple of example questions for “adult you”:

If parents said they needed you and you knew it was something they needed to do for themselves, would you say no?
If you needed to focus on your own wellbeing, but they said they needed you, would you prioritise their need over your own?
How many of your interactions with them is out of “should” vs. “want”?
How often does their mood affect yours, even at a distance?

Whether the parent(s) know it or not, parentified children are bred to become physical caregivers, relationship mediators, therapists and teachers for their parents.

With one primary driver - to do what is needed of you, not for you.

This creates… drumroll please… The Good Girl/ The Good Child.

And I’ve watched this route go a couple of distinct routes - the Perfectionist, the People Pleaser or the Black Sheep.

With not much space or slack in-between.

On A Scale Of 1-10…

So how do we bring about change, if we want or even need it?

The first step is in realising which party is likely to achieve change, and let’s be honest, it’s the parentified, because after all, the Parentification is working just fine for the parents. 🤦🏼‍♀️

Whenever it comes to change, and whoever is the one changing, we must give permission to the fact that humans often need to be driven to change - we very rarely volunteer for it (unless it’s candy-coated).

Change motivators are when:

Pain Becomes Greater Than Safety
Massive Threat to Survival or Identity
Over-Compelling Vision or Pull
Loss of Meaning in the Old Pattern
Given Safety to Change
Social Mirror or Self-Rupture
Epiphany comes with Legitimate Witness (Rare)

So, the question becomes for the parentified child:

“How bad does this have to get in order for you to change it?”

The Non-Negotiable Truth

Change only happens when at least TWO of these are present, at the same time.

Common pairings are:

Overwhelming Pain + Provided Safety (a container, network or person to help hold the transition/ conflict/ rupture)
Vision + Capacity (seeing how things could be with the emotional capacity to hold any outcome)
Identity threat + Permission (threat to current or future self with internal or external permission to solidify who you want to be)
Meaning loss + Social mirror (growing into new versions of self with external reflections of how things could be better)

One driver alone is rarely enough.

Congrats, You’ve Arrived At Suckville

Let’s face it, if you’re parentified and you’re reading this, you’re experiencing recovery through your own motivation of needing and wanting more for your life.

It won’t be because your parents want best for you and need you to change.

That saying of, “you’re probably doing the work because of those around you that aren’t”.

I don’t want to paint a picture that all older generations are at fault here. There are endless examples of good parenting, but by very nature of this being a generation affliction, we have to start by allowing the fault to lay where it should, regardless of ill intention or not.

Just because someone didn’t mean to cut you, doesn’t mean you’re not bleeding.

And owning that, makes the awakening with your parents so fucking hard.

They could have done better.

And it wasn’t your fault.

Ouch.

A Cocktail Of Headfuck

This leads us onto one of the hallmarks of emotional intelligence: the permission of co-existence.

The concept that there can be multiple truths going on at once.

Your parents could love you
Your parents could have done their absolute best
Their best wasn’t actually enough for you
Their best was actually a bit or a lot toxic
Their behaviour served them as much, or more, as it did you
Your inner child demands perfect parents then
Your inner child demands perfect parents now
You don’t want to upset your parents
You want them to change
You want them to say sorry and understand it all

THAT is why it’s a head fuck.

Because their simple way of parenting “as best they could” is a single streamline of thought and belief, whereas your comprehension of it could have dozens of emotional standpoints.

And the solution isn’t praying or fixing for their resolution for you.

It is instead, acceptance and agency.

Agent Fucked, Reporting For Duty

Agency is the ability, intelligence and drive to get the results you’re after.

It’s about a balance of reflection, planning and execution.

On loop.

And you can only arrive here through this acceptance:

after you accept that your parents will only change so much
that they can’t change the past
and that you’re an adult now and only you can fix the hurt parts inside

With Parentification, agency often looks like:

Reflection: Getting support, going to therapy, reading books, feeling your feelings, discovering the inner parts at play, understanding the co-existing inner conflicts and journalling/reflecting/acting as things go right and wrong.

Planning: Deciding boundaries, building support networks, scheduling touchpoints, deciding aftercare, planning around soreness (Christmas time, birthday milestones or dates of particular impact).

Execution: Getting on with your own life, doing things you weren’t able to as a kid, putting boundaries into practice, re-parenting yourself with love, being flexible with your needs as they change, attending grief groups or other cathartic expression (you’re reading mine).

This is about your inner-compass and the journey you are on, quitting Parentification is about you for once, not anyone else.

It’s the steps coursing your own path.

And it’s rarely on time, panic-free and without storms.

So, do I forgive and forget?

That’s a big-ass question.

Inner parts of us would be desperate to do so and other parts, no doubt, would be thinking, “fuck that”.

I find a neat solution to this question, is instead, to simply allow.

Allow that this happened to you.

And to allow the fact that you can’t change the past.

Digging your own heels into the ground against this only makes this pain worse. It’s in the non-acceptance that there’s part of you waiting for your parents to show up in the ways they didn’t and reverse what they’ve done - and they can’t.

Find your way of allowing and accepting of this horrible, fucked up shit that shouldn’t have happened to you.

Letting go of what should be (yet another “should”) by instead focusing on what is, helps.

But it still hurts, I get it. 🤍

Forgiveness and forgetting can then come in waves.

Some days, your life is good, your identity feels more solid and you have the right love around you: those can be the days where your softness with your parents can exist.

Other days when you don’t know who the fuck you are, when your Dad is a dick and your Mum is moaning despite doing nothing about it and coming to you at the same time work was crap and your partner isn’t getting it: that can be a day where it matters more.

The important thing is your anchoring of yourself.

It’s your grounding that is, and should always be, your priority.

Not the sea of people, events, jobs and circumstances around you.

Because that’s where the problem started.
You were anchor for everyone and everything else, but yourself.

Parentification Brings Out Righteous Petulance

“Reparenting” is a term given to all of this work.

And for most people, I would strongly recommend IFS therapy a.k.a Parts Work, to help examine all the different parts at play.

The need for reparenting suckkkkkks.

And it’s absolutely ok for us to feel petulant about it.

Why should we have to spend this time, energy and money to love ourselves, when the point of all this was the fact that the parentals didn’t?

I get it.

It shouldn’t be like this at all.

I see the impact of Parentification like the quintessential image of the angel and devil on our shoulders:

with the kinder one saying to keep being that kid they created to maintain the same ties and;
the naughty one saying to fix this; build your inner peace, tell them what has happened and demand change and apology

My own battle has listened to both, and still does.

Drama unfolded over Christmas and I found myself writing a two hour letter to my parents.

I sent it.

Did it fix the world, turn back time, make everything better?

No.

Did I reparent, protect, advocate and nourish myself for doing so?

Absolutely.

In Summary

Quitting Parentification does not make you feel better, it helps you function better. That is the difference.

Humans, especially kids, are always calibrating to find optimal and ideal conditions, this is why a child part inside us will ALWAYS be grieving the fact that their parents weren’t, aren’t and never will be perfect (or even ideal).

And just because these were the first children they had, doesn’t mean it was ok to put expectations on a young life that wasn’t ready.

It all has to co-exist.

Because, if it didn’t, we would harm ourselves, harm them, harm our own identities even further and harm those that don’t deserve it.

The key thing in “quitting” parentification isn’t the concept of curing it, it is the conscious decision to move with what it means now.

It’s about allowing the grief and understanding the impact.

It never has to be about acceptance of the past or forging a rigid, unforgiving future.

For once, my love, this is about softness.

It’s about allowing yourself to be witness to the behaviour and damage and allow it to co-exist with the person you get to be now.

That’s doesn’t make it ok.

But it allows you to be.

Love Lilith x

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