Becoming the caregiver for a parent who didn't always show up for you is not only about their needs. It's about yours too — the ones that went unmet, the longing for what didn't happen, and now, unexpectedly, the chance to offer what wasn't given. This is repair. It builds in you regardless of how your parent responds.
Circle of Security offers a way to hold this with kindness, without landing in blame.
Parents who struggled to be Bigger, Stronger, Wiser, and Kind were managing their own unmet needs and unresolved pain — what we call Shark Music. That doesn't make the impact on you smaller. But it means the struggle was not random, and it was not only about you. You were in it together.
What this does in you
Being Bigger, Stronger, Wiser, and Kind is hard enough. Doing it for someone who was not those things for you can be harder still. Some days you will find your no-nonsense tenderness. Some days what you offer will fall short of that, and it can still be good enough. That counts. Good enough is always the standard in this work, because the work was never meant to be perfect. It was meant to be real.
What matters about the reaching is that when you extend steadiness and care — the capacity to sit with someone's need without turning away — this is not only about your parent. The need you are meeting in them is not entirely different from the need that went unmet in you. That is what repair can be: learning to be with the unmet need and to meet it with kindness rather than distance, doing something in you that is yours to keep.
It's never too late
We usually say this about parents changing. But it applies here too, in a different direction. You can move toward greater security in yourself, not by resolving the past, but by choosing, imperfectly and repeatedly, to offer what you needed. Your parent may not soften, or acknowledge the shift, or meet you any differently than they ever have. That does not mean it didn't count. What you are building is real, regardless of their response.
You do not need to have resolved the history to show up with care. You are allowed to be the Hands for someone you have complicated feelings about. Messy and imperfect still counts.
There are always two people on the Circle. The question worth sitting with is not whether you can do this, but who are the Hands to support you while you are the Hands supporting your parent? The work of caregiving asks something of your own attachment system, and that system needs tending too. Who knows what you are carrying right now? Who can you go to when the weight of it gets heavy? Finding that person or persons is not separate from the work. It is part of how the work stays possible.
Take care of yourself as you care for others. The Circle of Security.
