Growing up, I genuinely believed my mother didn’t like me very much.
She’d stand at the kitchen counter kneading bread with her back to me while I chattered about my day, offering only the occasional “mmm-hmm.”
When other mothers were volunteering for school trips and baking cupcakes for class parties, mine sent me with homemade whole wheat muffins that nobody wanted to trade.
I’d watch her tend our vegetable garden for hours, completely absorbed, while I played alone nearby, wishing she’d look up and really see me.
It wasn’t until I found myself standing at my own kitchen counter, making yogurt from scratch while my two little ones tugged at my legs, that something shifted.
The weight of keeping everyone fed, clothed, safe, and emotionally regulated while managing my own anxiety suddenly made those memories look completely different.
The invisible load she never talked about
My mother made everything from scratch because we didn’t have money for store-bought anything.
Every meal, every snack, every piece of clothing that could be mended instead of replaced—she handled it all.
What looked like coldness to my child eyes was actually complete overwhelm.
She was drowning in the endless cycle of cooking, cleaning, preserving, mending, and trying to make our small income stretch to cover everything we needed.
When you’re using every ounce of mental energy to figure out how to make three meals from one chicken, there’s not much left for elaborate emotional conversations with your kids.
I get it now because I feel that same pull; even though we’re more financially stable than my parents were, the mental load of running a household while trying to parent consciously is crushing sometimes.
When my 5-year-old wants to tell me every single detail about the leaf collection she’s organizing while I’m trying to get dinner on the table, keep the 2-year-old from climbing the bookshelf, and remember if I moved the laundry to the dryer, I catch myself giving those same distant “mmm-hmms” my mother gave me.
What anxiety looks like from the outside
Here’s what I didn’t know as a kid: My mother was anxious.
Deeply, persistently anxious in a way that colored everything she did.
The obsessive gardening, the constant cooking, the way she’d reorganize the pantry when things got tough—these weren’t hobbies.
They were coping mechanisms.
After my son was born, I crashed hard into postpartum anxiety.
Suddenly, I couldn’t sleep even when the baby was sleeping.
I’d lie there calculating whether we had enough diapers, meal planning for the next week, worrying about developmental milestones.
During the day, I’d throw myself into making homemade baby food, researching the safest car seats, and reorganizing closets.
Anything to feel like I had some control over the chaos.
My husband finally convinced me to get help, and therapy has been life-changing, but it also made me realize that my mother probably needed the same support and never got it.
In her generation, you just pushed through.
You didn’t talk about feeling overwhelmed or anxious, and you certainly didn’t admit that motherhood was anything less than fulfilling.
When I watch old home videos now, I can see it in her face—that tight smile, the way her shoulders never quite relaxed, how she was always moving, always doing something with her hands.
She was white-knuckling her way through each day, and nobody ever asked if she was okay.
The weight of trying to break cycles
My mother’s parenting came from her own strict upbringing, where children were seen and not heard, where love was shown through provision rather than affection.
She was already revolutionary in her own way: She let us speak at the dinner table, she never hit us, she made sure we had books even when money was tight.
But watching her parent from that place of anxiety and overwhelm shaped me in ways I’m still untangling.
I find myself swinging between extremes, either completely absorbed in my kids’ emotional worlds to the point of exhaustion or suddenly hitting a wall and needing to retreat to the garden just like she did.
Have you ever caught yourself doing something your parent did and felt that jolt of recognition?
Last week, my daughter was trying to show me her sorted leaf collection for the fifth time while I was rushing to get dinner ready before everyone melted down from hunger.
I heard myself say, “Not now, honey, I’m busy,” in the exact tone my mother used.
The same flat, tired voice that used to make me feel invisible.
The difference is, I caught myself; I stopped, took a breath, and sat down on the kitchen floor to look at her leaves.
We can’t give from an empty cup, but we also can’t let our kids feel like they’re burdens for simply existing in our space.
Finding grace for both of us
These days, when my mother visits, I watch her with my kids and see a different person.
She gets down on the floor with them, something I never remember her doing with me, and listens to their stories with genuine interest.
She’s softer, more present.
Maybe it’s because the daily pressure is off, or maybe she’s done her own work to heal.
We don’t talk about it directly—that’s not her way—but I see it.
What breaks my heart is thinking about all the moments she wanted to be that person for me but couldn’t.
The anxiety, the financial stress, the lack of support, and the generational patterns she was trying to break with no roadmap was all too heavy.
I’m lucky to have resources she didn’t have.
Therapy, online communities, partners who are expected to share the mental load, the ability to sometimes choose convenience over homemade when I need to.
Even with all these advantages, I still struggle.
I still have days where I’m just surviving, where my kids probably think I don’t see them.
What I want my kids to know
Someday, my kids might write their own version of this story.
They might remember the times I was too absorbed in making homemade playdough to really listen, or when I escaped to the garden because I needed five minutes of quiet.
Moreover, they might wonder why I seemed distant on certain days or why I insisted on doing things the hard way when easier options existed.
I hope they’ll also remember that I apologized when I got it wrong.
That I told them about my anxiety instead of letting them think they caused it.
That even on the hard days, I found ways to show them they were seen and loved, even if it was just sitting on the kitchen floor for two minutes to admire a leaf collection.
Most of all, I hope they’ll understand that mothers are whole people carrying histories and hurts and hopes that have nothing to do with their children but affect everything about how we parent.
We’re all doing the best we can with what we have, and sometimes that best looks different than what our kids need.
That doesn’t mean the love isn’t there.
Sometimes, it just means the load is too heavy to carry gracefully.
Moving forward with compassion
I call my mother more now, just to share the daily stuff: The funny things the kids said, what’s growing in the garden, the new recipe I’m trying.
She offers advice sometimes, and I can hear in her voice that she wishes she’d done things differently.
I tell her about the things she taught me that I’m grateful for—how to make bread, how to grow tomatoes, how to make something from nothing.
We’re both healing in our own ways: She through finally having the space to be the grandmother she couldn’t quite manage to be as a mother, while I’m going through therapy with the conscious effort and grace of a supportive partner.
My kids through growing up with a mother who’s trying to be honest about her struggles while still showing up for them.
The truth is, we’re all carrying more than our children can see.
Every parent is fighting battles their kids know nothing about, making imperfect choices with incomplete information, and hoping it’s enough.
Understanding this has helped me hold both truths: my mother loved me deeply, and I still felt unseen.
She did her best, and I needed more.
That’s the messy, complicated reality of family: We love imperfectly, we hurt each other without meaning to, and we eventually grow enough to see each other as human beings doing our best with what we’ve got.
