They Did Their Best (and perhaps they could have done better)
The stuff we pick up from our Parents
9/24/20263 min read
There’s a poem by Philip Larkin called This Be The Verse. Which if you don't know it, is worth reading. It’s short, funny, angry and uncomfortable, and it captures something quite profound about growing up.It begins:
“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.”
Not exactly the gentle opening you might expect from a poem about family.
Larkin goes on to suggest that our parents pass things on to us, not just the good things, but their own difficulties, anxieties and ways of relating. But importantly, he doesn't stop there. He turns the lens back another generation:
“But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats”
In just a few lines, Larkin captures the idea that what gets passed from one generation to the next often didn't begin with our parents. They too were shaped by their experiences, their parents, their circumstances and the world they grew up in.
Families pass things down, not just our eye colour or mannerisms, but ways of communicating, coping, loving, arguing and protecting ourselves.
Perhaps you learned that keeping quiet was safer than speaking up. Maybe you became the peacemaker, the responsible one, the person who didn't want to cause trouble. In your family affection may have been difficult to express, or emotions dismissed. Your childhood may have been loving in many ways, but there were experiences that still left a mark.
And this is where things can become confusing, because perhaps your parents did love you, maybe they really did do their best. They could have had their own difficult childhoods, their own struggles, fears and limitations. Perhaps they were repeating patterns that had been passed down to them without ever having had the opportunity to understand or question them.
And yes, maybe they could have done better.
Those things can all be true at the same time.
This can be one of the hardest things to untangle in counselling. You might feel angry about things that happened when you were growing up, while simultaneously feeling guilty for being angry. You might understand why your mother or father behaved as they did and still wish they had behaved differently.
You might feel loyal to them…. You might also feel hurt by them. You might even find yourself thinking, “I don't want to blame them. They had a difficult life too”.
Counselling isn't about apportioning blame. It isn't about putting your parents on trial or deciding who was the villain and who was the victim. And it certainly isn't about telling you what you should feel about your family.
Instead, counselling can offer a place where all those apparently contradictory feelings are allowed to exist.
Love and anger.
Loyalty and disappointment.
Understanding and hurt.
Gratitude and grief.
You don't have to choose between them.
Counselling can help you gently untangle these threads, to understand where your feelings come from, recognise the patterns that may have travelled through generations, and make sense of how your past may still be influencing your present.
Understanding doesn't mean excusing, and recognising what your parents were carrying doesn't mean your own experience becomes less important.
Sometimes, understanding our parents more deeply can help us to understand ourselves. We can have compassion for their limitations without pretending those limitations didn't affect us, and most importantly, we can begin to separate what happened to us from who we are now.
We can’t go back and change our childhood. We cannot change our parents or the circumstances in which they raised us, but we can become curious about the patterns we have inherited. We can notice the things we learned to do to survive, belong or feel safe, and ask whether those things are still serving us.
And this is where there is hope beyond Larkin's poem. We may have been shaped by those who came before us, but we don't have to simply pass everything on.
Our parents are part of our story, but they don’t have to write the ending.
Chris Greenaway, 24/09/2026
077443 661004