You can love someone and still not know how to be in a room with them. Many parents and children come in wishing the other would finally understand something, and fairly sure by now that they won’t. For a parent and a teenager, it might be conflict that has stopped responding to anything either of you tries. For a parent and an adult child, it might follow an estrangement, a diagnosis, or a choice the family has struggled to accept. In immigrant families, the distance can be generational and cultural as well as emotional. Sometimes the goal is closeness, and sometimes it’s a distance you’ve both chosen honestly. Whatever brings you in, there is usually more room for understanding than either of you expects.
It’s okay to come in unsure of what to say, or of how this will go. You don’t need an apology or a defense ready, just a sense of what you hope for between you, and what has made it hard to get there.
You’ll have room to say what you need to, in your own words and your own time. No one is here to be blamed or set straight. Coming in is a first step, not a promise about where things go.