Why your mother couldn’t love you
Struggling to heal in the wake of an abusive or toxic mother? This is why she couldn’t love you like she should have.
by: E.B. Johnson
In this life, there are few who touch our lives quite like our mothers. They bring us into this world, and then they shelter us and lead us toward better lives. Some mothers fail in this duty, though. Whether scared by their own experiences in childhood (or hindered by mental and physical illness) some mothers fail to love their children as they should be loved. In order for us to restore that love in our lives, we have to learn to accept ourselves and the mothers we were granted.
Why your mother couldn’t love you.
Was your mother abusive? Distant? Toxic? Sometimes, the mothers that we land ourselves with aren’t the mothers that we need. Some mothers are incapable of love. That’s just the way things are. Whether this inability to love comes from a lack of know-how, or a lack of desire, the results are the same. We end up damaged and looking for answers. Even so, some mothers can’t love us and that’s never our fault.
She didn’t know how
Are you still reeling from the realization that you were unloved by your mother? While it’s a hard answer to swallow, some parents simply aren’t taught how to provide their children with meaningful love. We lead our lives as we are taught to lead them. If your mother grew up in a home in which she was also unloved, it will be hard for her to connect with that love in her own family.
She was unwell
Did you grow up with a mother who was mentally or physically unwell? Maybe an insidious shade like NPD made her distant and cruel. Maybe depression, severe pain, or even chronic hospitalization made it impossible for her to be present for anyone but herself. Physical and mental illness is not a joke. It can take over our lives and deplete our ability to be open, loving, and supportive with the people we love most (even when they’re our children).
She was in pain
Mothers are strong, and they often hold a family together even as they are ripped apart from the inside out. Your mother may have been fighting painful battles that you didn’t even know about. Maybe the hangups and the pain from her past were so great that she couldn’t really extend herself to you as a child. This isn’t an excuse, but knowing the depth of our own pain, it becomes more understandable.
She was too stretched
Was your mother the primary caregiver in your household? Perhaps you were always raised in a single parent home. Or maybe your mother became the breadwinner later down the line. Either way, this created an incredible amount of stress and pressure in your mother’s life. This stress can build walls and get in the way of the relationships that we form. Dealing with the stress of life, she may have lost sight of loving you fully, as you needed to be loved.
She wasn’t a mother
At the end of the day, there’s not always an excuse for someone who fails to love their children. Some people aren’t meant to be parents. Maybe she didn’t want to be a mother and probably never should have been a mother. That doesn’t mean she was mentally unwell, or that she had anything wrong with her. Some women aren’t cut out for motherhood, but find themselves forced to take on the role due to their circumstances or the pressure of family (and society) around them.
What you can do about it now.
You can heal from the pain and trauma of a mother who failed you, and it’s one of the most transformative things you will ever do. By accepting her for who she is, re-parenting yourself with love, and falling in love with your inner child — you can become someone she never had the strength or ability to be. And that’s a powerful thing when it comes to building a happier future.
1. Accept her for who she was
Before you can engage with any healing, you need to accept your mother for who she was. You can’t continue to look past the failures and the pain. That’s not how either one of you will heal. The only way for you to find more stable footing is to admit who your mother was and then go from there. Once you understand that she was a flawed and pained (like us all) you can move forward effectively with a healing plan that works for you.
Accept your mother for who she was. Stop trying to compare her to the person you thought she should have been. That’s why you’re continuing to suffer at her hands — because you keep comparing her to someone she never was. That person never existed and there’s no point spending your energy comparing your very real mother to her.
Look at your mother; the good and the bad. See only that version of your mother and try to look at her with the compassion of an empathetic stranger. You had no part in shaping who she chose to be. You did not make her bitter, angry, or abusive. You didn’t turn her against you, and you did not shape the course of her life. She did all those things for herself, as you can still do for yourself. Once you learn how to let her go and focus on your own happiness and wellbeing.
2. Begin the re-parenting process
One of the most powerful things we can do for ourselves as the adults of unloving mothers is to re-parent ourselves. While it may sound silly, becoming the parent we never had is a really powerful way to shift our perspective and our feelings around our childhoods. Instead of dwelling on everything your mother wasn’t, become that person you needed for yourself. Personal responsibility will get you everywhere when it comes to finding peace.
Re-parent yourself and become the caretaker that your mother could never be for you. You can’t erase the scars she left, but you can make space for healing and happy new memories. You can teach yourself new ways to live your life and see your future.
Focus first on being the soothing influence you didn’t get. Comfort yourself when you’re upset. Be supportive of the way you feel. Don’t belittle your emotions or deny them. Part of re-parenting is learning to soothe ourselves. With this newly developed skill to hand, we can become that steady assurance we so desperately needed. Talk yourself through decisions and experiences as though you were the most loving mother in the world. Take yourself by the hand and lead yourself onward like the loving parent you were denied.
3. Fall in love with your inner child
When we are raised by mothers who cannot love us, it changes the inner child in us. Unable to feel safe, they bury themselves away and they take our joy and our optimism with them. We need our inner children to feel safe, seen, and heard in order for us to feel fully complete in our own lives. Uniting with our inner child and welcoming into a safe place is how we take our inner transformation to the next level.
Fall in love with your inner child and accept them like they were never accepted by your mother. Welcome them out of their hiding spot and into a world that’s safe for them to enjoy. Take them by the hand and show them how to be themselves again. Let them know that you love them and always will.
By falling in love with your inner child, you return to yourself a sense of love that was denied to you in your own past. It’s a transformative process, and one that can bring back a lot of the light and innocence into your life. When you learn to love your inner child, you give them the strength to enjoy themselves once and for all. It’s a deep form of healing and touches on our shadow work, or the intense stage of personal healing that helps us to resolve our dark wounds.
4. Be better than she was
Growing up alongside someone who can’t love you is hard. You get struck with all kinds of complicated emotions, and high among them is anger and resentment. As a kid, your mom is supposed to love you. There’s nothing you have to do for that. It’s something that should just happen (and you know that, even as a kid). Rather than slipping into that swamp of resentment, we have to change the narrative. Now is the moment to be something better than your mother was.
Be a better person than your mother was. Be a person who can love the child within you and see the value and the beauty that they bring. Break out of her shadow. Get out of her patterns. Put everything that she put on you to bed once and for all.
Live every day hoping to be someone greater than your mother. You can outshine her. You can give more love to yourself and the world than she ever conceived of. All the negatives that she left you can be turned into positives. But you have to commit to the process and commit to shifting your perspective intentionally and with mindfulness every day. It’s okay to be better than your mother was. As a matter of fact, it’s the best gift you can give to yourself.
5. Fall in love with all of yourself
There can be no denying the power of falling in love with yourself, no matter what you’re trying to heal from. It’s especially powerful, though, when we’re uncovering those deeply rooted mother wounds and exposing them to the light. When you love yourself, you can shed that shame your mother left you with. You won’t need to hide from her hatred anymore, because the love you have for yourself will exceed anything else she ever offered you.
Even if your mother didn’t give you the love that you needed, you can give it to yourself. You don’t have to stay hung up on the person who she was. You can become the person who you want to be. That only happens, though, when you fall in love with the entire person who you are — the good and the bad.
Create a focus on self-love in your life. This means learning how to trust yourself, be there for yourself, and comfort and soothe yourself when things go wrong. You need to see and understand that you are the most deserving and lovable person in the world. Just because your mother couldn’t love you doesn’t mean no one else can. You can start loving yourself right now in the moment. Embrace your strengths, weaknesses, and everything that has made you the powerful person you are today.
Putting it all together…
Was your mother toxic or unloving as a child? Healing from this isn’t a straightforward process. It’s one that has to be approached with intention and mindfulness every single day. We can’t move on from a mother who didn’t love us without confronting the pain that we’re in. Once you acknowledge who she was and why she was that person, you can see a new future for yourself.
Accept your mother for who she was and stop comparing her to the person you think she should have been. It doesn’t matter. That time is gone. How are you going to move forward without the pain she left you? Begin the process of re-parenting yourself and bring your inner child back out into the light. Teach them it’s safe to open up, and that there is love in the world for them. Be a better person than she was. Love yourself. Open up. Take chances. Experience life and be there for the family that you build. Above all else, though, fall in love with yourself. You have always deserved a deep and abiding love. The only person who can give it to you is you.
- Meadows-Oliver, M. (2006). Homeless Adolescent Mothers: A Metasynthesis of Their Life Experiences. Journal Of Pediatric Nursing, 21(5), 340–349. doi: 10.1016/j.pedn.2006.02.004
- Willock, B. (1986). Narcissistic vulnerability in the hyperaggressive child: The disregarded (unloved, uncared-for) self. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 3(1), 59–80. doi: 10.1037/0736–9735.3.1.59
