I hear you. Truly. I spent three years in therapy struggling with the same dilemma.

Abuse was so normal. I had no concept of healthy parenting behaviours. Until I dug deep into psychological research and modern parenting approaches.

Until I realised I'd call it abuse for any other child but my own younger selves. We often have more compassion for others than ourselves.

Believe your hurting parts. They will keep crying because they're hurting.

Your parents can BOTH have good parts and bad parts. As a whole, as a net result, they let you down, traumatised you, abused you, neglected you. That's why those parts are in so much pain. The other parts desperately idealize your parents and dismiss the pain because perhaps they're afraid accepting the truth will bring profound pain.

No abuser is cruel 100%, 24/7 and we cling on to those random "mercies".

I still struggle with accepting my parents abused me. Immensely. I go back and forth still, but lesser and lesser.

Your heart knows on a deep level that you weren't loved, cherished, nurtured, guided, protected.

But that is an agonizing truth one struggles to accept. The abused child blames themselves to survive. To preserve attachment to traumatising parents. Anything else meant annihilationm

But you're not a helpless child now, even if you were beaten until your mid twenties like me or faced a lot worse than me.

If your parents were "good enough" parents, you wouldn't have these hurting parts afraid of them, saying they're traumatised by the parents. You wouldn't feel you're silencing their pain.

If they were truly good enough parents, you would not need to idealize them and push aside the other feelings.