“Despite Their Parenting…”

I didn’t see the post myself. I never do.

But my sons did.

A smiling photo — him and the kids.

Caption: “They turned out great… despite their parenting.”

And just like that, a sentence became a weapon dressed as wit.

A caption became a confession.

A joke became judgment.

My kids are older now — 20, 18, and 14. They don’t need me to translate anymore. They can read between the lines, hear the tone behind the text, sense the ego behind the humor. They know when something “playful” is actually pointed.

My first instinct, as always, was to defend him. I’ve done it for years. I’ve softened the blows, rewritten the stories, made excuses for choices that weren’t mine to explain. But my children — the same ones I once tried to protect from every storm — are now the ones pulling me out of it.

“Mom, you don’t have to keep defending him.”

Because “despite their parenting” isn’t a harmless joke. It’s a dig delivered to an audience that doesn’t know the whole story — one that’s been curated, filtered, and edited for applause. And applause has always been his language.

The thing about people who thrive on being adored online is that they often forget the quiet ones who carried the weight offline. The ones who kept showing up when the lights were off, when it wasn’t convenient, when no one was watching.

I’ve made peace with my past. I’ve forgiven the woman who stayed too long, who tried too hard, who thought endurance was the same as love. I’ve stopped trying to rewrite what was never mine to fix. But even peace has its limits when someone tries to turn your scars into punchlines.

This isn’t about me. It’s about the thousands of people who carry the invisible guilt of “doing their best” while someone else narrates their story for clout. It’s about how easy it is to humiliate the hands that once held you steady, to make a mockery of motherhood, of sacrifice, of the kind of love that never needed to be broadcasted to exist.

“Despite their parenting,” he wrote.

And yet — despite the noise, despite the rewriting, despite the ache of being misunderstood — our children still turned out great.

Not because of him.

Not despite me.

But because love, even bruised and imperfect, still found a way to raise good people.