How to forgive our parents?

Someone had asked me, “Is it possible for our parents to sometimes be wrong? And if I want to stop blaming them and truly forgive them, is that possible? And if yes, how?” The answer to the first question is: It is absolutely possible that our parents can be wrong at times. They can make mistakes. Sometimes, decisions made by parents may later turn out to be incorrect.
Before answering the next question, imagine that I bring you all the textbooks from your fourth-grade school year. After giving you exactly the same amount of time you had back then to prepare, if I ask you to appear for the fourth-grade exams again, would you score fewer marks than you did as a child or more?

Most likely, you would score far higher. Not only that, while reading those books today, you would realize that concepts that once felt difficult seem simpler today. Why? Because when you were in the fourth grade, you studied using the best knowledge, skills and understanding you had at that age. Since then, your knowledge, and skills have grown.
The same applies to parents. Whenever they make decisions for their children, they do so based on their best knowledge, awareness, exposure and understanding at that particular point in time. If they were to make that decision today, with current knowledge, it may look different. But at that time, it truly was their best possible decision. If you have a child, can you confidently say that your parenting is 100% perfect? If you believe so, I encourage you to wait for fifteen years. Your child may one day tell you what you should have done differently to make their life easier. At that moment, you may say, “I did what I thought was right at that time.” Still, it may feel wrong to your child.

Today we have endless content on parenting. Most of our parents had none of that. They simply followed what their earlier generation did. In that sense, they were victims of victims. No one was truly wrong—each generation acted based on what it knew. Once you understand that your parents acted according to their best knowledge at that given time, blaming them becomes much harder and forgiving them becomes much easier.