Forgiving My Parents Made Me a Better Father

An excerpt from my new book, ”Hard Lessons From the Hurt Business: Boxing and the Art of Life.”

Having a new child is one of the most stressful events a person can experience. Yes, we love our children and try to cherish every moment, knowing that one night will be the last time you rock them to sleep, but that doesn't mean it's not a brutal affair. As of this writing, I'm only two years into the journey of parenthood, but it has tested my endurance, decision-making, and patience in ways I've never experienced before—and I'm not a single parent.

This experience has granted me a different perspective and greater sympathy for single parents than ever. I was never bitter about my father's absence. However, throughout my life, I have been heavily critical of my mother for her lifestyle and choices.

Raising a child, even in a two-parent home, is a challenge, but I've been able to meet it with maturity and resources. My wife and I work for ourselves and alternate uninterrupted hours. We never worry about taking parental leave or missing work because our child is sick. We don’t need to find babysitters for appointments or errands. There’s always someone to stay home or tag in. Now that I have a child, I constantly think about how difficult it must be to get anything done when there’s only one parent.

Single parenting is more than a full-time job. You’re free to leave your job at the end of your shift. If you don’t like your job, you can change it or train for a better one. But single parenting never ends—and every year, the job demands more from you while offering fewer resources in return.

The inability to handle daily affairs is only one side of the problem. Without the other parent in the home, there is no reprieve. If a single mother is sick or overwhelmed, she must still be a mom. She has to keep it together for her kids even when the world is falling apart. That’s not just hard. Sometimes, it’s impossible.

A national survey of six thousand households found that single parents are more likely to use abusive discipline than parents in dual-caretaker households. Lower incomes, higher stress, and the lack of emotional support all raise the risk. The biggest predictor of child abuse isn’t living in poverty or violent neighborhoods—it’s whether one adult primarily raises a child.

My mother died one year before my son was born. I still struggle with forgiving her and my father, but I know I have to. Not because they deserve it, and not even because it makes me feel better. I forgive them so the past doesn’t control my present. So I don’t let pain become poison in how I raise my son.

Many victims of childhood abuse wind up angry, addicted, or incarcerated. Some are just trying to survive, but most are acting out from a deep void—the absence of love, safety, or identity. When your whole life has been spent in a state of fight-or-flight with no escape, it warps your brain. Research shows early-life trauma rewires your neural pathways, raising your risk for anxiety, depression, and aggression. You don’t just feel unsafe. You believe the world is unsafe.

I wish my mom were still alive so I could tell her I forgive her. Not just for my own peace, but because I now understand what she was up against. My mother was a deeply flawed woman, but I believe she tried her best. She was sexually abused, physically beaten, and emotionally shattered before she ever had kids. And once she did, she raised them alone, with no guidance, no partner, and no support.

Now that I have a son, I see just how impossible that must have felt.

My father is a different story. He wasn’t abusive. But he wasn’t much of anything. We didn’t have a relationship. He’d call once or twice a month, maybe see us once or twice a year. When he visited, it often felt like a chore for both of us. I didn’t look up to him, learn from him, or even really know him. He didn’t hurt me. He just wasn’t there.

In my 20s and early 30s, I didn’t think about him much. But after getting sober and doing the emotional work that came with it, I started to feel something new: a low-grade anger. It wasn’t explosive; it just lingered, like background radiation.

When my son was born, that anger intensified. I couldn’t understand how a man could move 300 miles away from his kids and only see them once a year. I looked at my son and couldn’t fathom walking away. It made me furious and deeply confused. I had no answers, just a gnawing pain that I knew would eventually affect my ability to be the father I wanted to be.

The only explanation I ever got was from my mom, who used to yell, “Your father didn’t even want you!” whenever we got excited about seeing him. As a child, that cuts deep. And for a long time, I believed her.

However, I then stumbled across a Pew Research study that altered my perception of him. According to their data, millennial dads spend triple the time with their kids compared to fathers from the Baby Boomer generation—my dad’s generation. For men like him, being an absent father wasn’t abnormal. It was the norm.

Until the early 2000s, researchers didn’t even consider a father’s role in a child’s development to be worth studying. His generation didn’t talk about parenting, psychology, or child development. They didn’t know what they didn’t know.

Later, I had lunch with my uncle and learned that my dad’s father abandoned the family shortly after my father was born. His mother died when he was four. I had never heard this before. That’s when it clicked: my father wasn’t just negligent—he was broken. He was a man doing the best he could with no blueprint for fatherhood. No model. No healing. Just dysfunction passed down like an heirloom.

This doesn’t excuse his absence. But it helps explain it. From his perspective, showing up once a year was progress. That doesn’t mean it was enough. It just means I understand it now.

And understanding gave me what I needed to forgive him.

Forgiving my father and my mother didn’t make the past go away. It made me better. It made me softer, wiser, and more grounded. It gave me clarity instead of rage. And more than anything, it gave me the power to stop the cycle.

Because now, I know exactly what kind of father I want to be—and more importantly, what kind of father I refuse to be.

I won’t raise my son with fists, silence, shame, or absence. I’ll raise him with presence, patience, and love. He won’t grow up wondering if he was wanted. He won’t have to forgive me for disappearing. He’ll know every day that he matters.

And that’s how the cycle ends.

This an excerpt from Ed Latimore’s new book, Hard Lessons From the Hurt Business: Boxing and the Art of Life. It tells the story of Ed’s journey from growing up in public housing and being raised by a single mother to battling alcoholism, and ultimately rebuilding his life through boxing, which he discovered at age 22. If you want to read more, the book is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever books are sold.