Your parents are supposed to be your safe space. They’re the people you can talk to about anything, who are there for you no matter what, and who are meant to protect you from the bullies of the world.

For some, though, their parents are the bullies, and they’re recalling some truly hurtful words they heard at home.

The 80s were wild.

Broke my arm on a school ski trip, causing the whole trip to come back late.

Dad picked me up at school and told me he wasn’t taking me to the hospital. Maybe mom will take me tomorrow.

Get home, both parents refuse to take me as they need their sleep.

They put sleep ahead of me.

the look the orthopedic Dr gave my mother the next afternoon upon hearing this confirmed it was as f**ked up as I thought.

This was the 1980s so child services wasn’t involved.

I just stopped breathing.

I hate that something so ugly came out of me.

For context, my mom is Korean, slim and petite. She had two daughters with a black American and we were never skinny, pretty or smart enough for her.

And she told us all the time.

Literally could have been a goner.

When I was 11 I had my first asthma attack.

I couldn’t breathe and my mom says “what do you want me to do, take you to the hospital?? You know I don’t have insurance!”.

Actually no, I didn’t know that being that I was a child.

I lived for 3 days barely being able to breathe.

My mom doubled down and would berate me for “exaggerating” it.

Thanks mom.

They should have realized…sooner?

They gave me the advice to never have children, that all of us (us six kids) ruined my mother’s life.

A silver lining.

When I was 16 my adopted dad told me “I wish we had adopted a girl”.

It’s been over three decades, and now the man can’t even remember my name as dementia takes his mind, and I still resent him for that.

As I noted when this came up elsewhere, there is a silver lining to be had from it. As a parent myself I am acutely aware of just how damaging words can be and even when my kids absolutely were pissing me off I never said anything like this to them.

I tried to always tie chastisement to behavior and not them as a person.

A special hell.

“I can’t believe you expect so much from us just because you got diagnosed with cancer”

My mother while kicking me out of her house in the middle of chemotherapy at 25 years of age when I couldn’t afford to pay rent on unemployment.

Why on earth?

“I love [your sister’s] kids more than yours.”

She justified it by calling my husband and I better parents, my husband’s parents as better grandparents, and saying that my nephews “needed it more,” which might all be true, but it still stung.

She can’t really wonder why.

I was 17 and arguing with my mother.

She grabbed my stepdad’s loaded revolver he kept on top of the grandfather clock, and pointed it at my face.

She looked absolutely unhinged and told me “I swear I’ll ki** you”.

Unfortunately that’s one of several incidents.

Almost 30 years later and she wonders why we have a very distant relationship.

Too many to count.

What hurtful thing DIDN’T my parent say to me?

“You’re the reason I just watched 16 years of my life walk out that door!” (My Dad left to cool off after my mother had been screaming at him all day. I just happened to be coming out of my room.)

“Stop practicing with that instrument. You have no musical talent and you embarrass me when you try.” (I had just taken my first lesson on a clarinet and she was mad because I couldn’t automatically play it. She stood outside my bedroom screaming abuse at me, until I took the clarinet back to school and told the music teacher I was too dumb to play it.)

“I thought I had a good kid with this one. Not a loser like you. “ Mother asked me to take my 13 year old sister to the doctor. She didn’t tell me that it was to check to see if the abortion worked. She blamed me for my sister getting pregnant, even though I lived in another state. It was the same when she found weed in my sister’s room,

“Why can’t you be like Linda?” Linda died as a prostitute who was a junkie. I put myself through school.

I hope they were old enough to drive at least.

I’ll be back to pick you up in three days.

(She did not).

Burrowed deep.

The one that rattles in my head the most (either not repressed or just recent enough to remember better) was from my dad.

After I had lost a bit of weight, said “wow, you actually look like a human being!”

My dad speaks in sarcasm so who knows how rude he was meaning to be but man… that one burrowed deep.

Unbelievably gross.

That they regretted adopting me. Ooof. So you mean TWO families didn’t want me!?!

Well that’s next level.

On her deathbed, the last thing my Mom said to me was, “I hate you.”

She literally picked him.

I wish I had aborted you and I hate you because you look like your damn father.

She still says it. Last week “I’ve always hated you because you look so much like your dad.”

I told her that was her fault because why didn’t she boink someone else?

There are no words.

After my mom and I discussed my dad raping me as a child her response, “How could your father do that to me?!”

Those aren’t your feelings!

I was having an argument with my mom and when I told her about some stuff I remembered that wasn’t exactly nice as a kid she said “well I don’t remember that happening so it must’ve never happened, and I choose to live in the reality where it didn’t, but you can do whatever you want” and walked away

Feelings invalidated? Oh big time

Honestly, even good parents can slip up and say hurtful things.

We’re all human, and no one is perfect.