My Mom Wasn’t a Bad Mother—She Was Just Drowning, Too

I used to tell people my mom was the villain of my childhood.

Short-tempered. Always tired. Never there when I needed her emotionally. I swore I’d never be like her. I promised myself I’d never parent the way she did—distant, reactive, hard to love.

But I understand her now. And I wish I had understood sooner.


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The Woman Who Raised Me Was Not the Woman She Wanted to Be

I remember being ten years old, watching her slam cabinet doors, mutter under her breath, and cry quietly in the bathroom. At the time, I thought she was angry at me.

But she wasn’t.

She was angry at life.

At being 36 with three kids and no one asking how she was doing.

At waking up every morning to make everyone else’s breakfast while no one remembered if she ate.

At working two jobs and still choosing between the electricity bill or groceries.

At surviving a marriage that died five years before the divorce finally happened.


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She Wasn’t Cold—She Was Empty

You can’t pour from an empty cup. But no one told my mom that.

She gave and gave, until there was nothing left. And when she snapped, I took it personally. I thought her shortness meant I was unworthy of patience. I thought her silence meant I was unloved.

But now I know: Her quiet wasn’t rejection. It was exhaustion. Her anger wasn’t hatred. It was helplessness. Her distance wasn’t indifference. It was survival.


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The Day I Saw Her Humanity

Last year, I went home for the holidays.

She hugged me tighter than usual. Her hair was grayer. Her face was softer. And when we sat alone at the kitchen table, I asked her something I never had before:

“Were you happy when I was growing up?”

She stared at her tea for a long time. Then she said, “No. I was surviving. Every day felt like trying to hold the world together with duct tape and prayer.”

And then, her voice broke: “But I tried. God knows, I tried.”

That’s when it hit me.

My mom didn’t fail me.

She just wasn’t allowed to fall apart.


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I Was Raised by a Woman Who Needed Raising, Too

She had me at 23. A baby raising a baby. With trauma in her bloodline and no therapist in sight. She never got to discover who she was before she had to become who we needed.

And while I blamed her for her cracks, I never saw the foundation she built beneath our feet.

She never let us go hungry. She worked through migraines and heartbreaks. She gave up her dreams so we could chase ours.

Was she perfect? No.

Was she present? Yes. In the only way she knew how.


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I Forgive Her—And I’m Learning to Thank Her

Now, when I think of my mom, I don’t see a villain. I see a warrior. A woman with trembling hands who still carried three lives on her back.

I stopped resenting her for what she couldn’t give me and started appreciating what she did.

Because love doesn’t always look like lullabies and bedtime stories.

Sometimes, love looks like staying.

Sometimes, love looks like showing up when you’re broken.

And sometimes, love looks like a tired woman holding the world together with cracked hands.


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If you’re still angry at your parents, I get it.

But one day, you might realize they were just as scared, confused,