Hi everyone. I’m a 27 year old girl who typically lives on my own but who moved back to be with my parents a couple of years ago to help them with an older relative who's been ailing. I’m dealing with an incredibly intense situation. I came back to the Midwest, where I grew up, to get away from the west coast and to help my mom and dad. I’m the second oldest of four siblings, and the oldest girl, and my parents have always thought of me as the most “together” and mature of their kids...the “sibling in chief,” basically. It’s a role in our family I really value and coming back home during this chaos was sort of an example of me living it out.

It’s honestly been really nice to be at home with them during all this...to be in my childhood home, my old bedroom, eating my mom’s cooking, just being in a safe space while the outside world is a mess, and having my mom and dad’s company - we’ve always been really close. Apparently, though, my parents want to be close with me in a way that I never anticipated.

I was up late talking with my mom over tea this past weekend and we were skirting the topic of sex. We never talk about it explicitly or directly, as close as we are, but as we were in the area of the topic, my mom said something that made my jaw drop: “you know, your dad and I often think of you that way.”

Honestly, it sent me reeling. At first it didn’t even register...I thought I had misunderstood, or was hearing things. But my mom explained that, for a long time, she and my dad have been...”interested” in me. I work as a consultant and it’s my job to hear people out and listen carefully, and with empathy, and that’s what I tried to do with my mom...a lot of nodding, a lot of calmly saying “I understand” and just trying to hear her out. But honestly, it was the hardest interaction of my life, and it only got harder when my mom asked me to consider going to bed with them. I told her I would think deeply about what we’d discussed. Then I went up to bed and just lay there, utterly baffled. But I also felt this deep sense of empathy for my parents, to have carried a secret like this for so long, and a strange sense of pride that they trusted me enough to open up about it.

Since that initial talk with my mom, I’ve sat down with both her and my dad and we’ve talked things out more as parents and daughter. What they’re asking of me is...a lot. I’m trying really, really hard to practice empathy and approach all this with an open mind. It’s been so emotionally intense. I guess I’m posting in the hope of hearing from people who might have words of wisdom. Thank you for listening.