The Space Between Us. What I am Learning About My Mother (And Myself)

The mother-daughter relationship might be one of the most complicated love stories out there. Not quite friends. Not quite enemies perhaps somewhere between soulmates and strangers.

My relationship with my mother has never been super easy. We have had tension. Distance. Periods of silence. A lifetime of miscommunications and unmet expectations. But recently, she spent some time with me here in the UK and it shifted something, not everything, but something.

I am older now, maybe not wiser, but definitely more "worn-in" with life experience. There is  something about seeing your parents in your space that invites a quieter kind of understanding.

Here’s what I have noticed and sitting with.

1. They were a person before they were your parent.

It is easy to forget that our mothers had full lives before we existed. Dreams, heartbreaks, passions and back then many limitations compared to what we have now. They were someone’s daughter too,someone's girlfriend and a woman navigating a world that probably did not hand her a roadmap either.

Watching my mom sit at my house, some random conversations and just getting out and about,  I saw glimpses of the girl she used to be, before the weight of motherhood, marriage and responsibility perhaps bent her spirit. It was at that moment, for the first time, I didn’t see her as just my mother but rather as a woman who had to make choices. Sometimes with too little, sometimes without support and sometimes out of pure survival.

2. Most people do the best they can with what they’ve got.

I used to think she did not love me the way I wanted to be loved but now I wonder if she loved me the only way she knew how.

No, she was not soft, not nurturing in the traditional sense. No long hugs or “I’m proud of you”s or deep heart-to-hearts. But she showed up. She kept going. She worried in silence. She cooked, she cleaned, she hustled. That was her love language—even if I couldn’t understand it at the time. I remember how she drove to pick me up and get me to a job I hated just so that I could ensure I get paid and finish what I had started and as hard it was at the time, I often wonder where I would be today.

It’s a strange kind of grief: mourning the parent you wished for while learning to appreciate the one you actually have.

3. Time doesn’t wait for us to figure it out.

There’s a different kind of heartbreak in watching your parents age. The slowing down. The forgetting. The way their hands shake slightly when they reach for a cup. Suddenly, you realise they won’t always be here.

All those years I spent being "busy" or trying to prove something suddenly felt like a luxury. Because now, the clock feels louder, the time together feels heavier and sacred.

I don’t know if we will ever have the relationship movies are made about, but do know that I am grateful for the time we got to spend together, some laughs, some tough conversations and a vegetable patch that I will always look upon fondly.

4. Hard Work Was the First Language I Learned

Perhaps sometimes love does not sound like “I’m proud of you.” Sometimes it looks like showing up when it’s hard. Sometimes it is hard and what lacked in softness was made for in grit. I was taught to keep going, without praise and without pause. That kind of love is tough but it has also built a tough daughter. There were no soft life sermons or motivational speeches about resilience. I wasn’t taught hard work, I did hard work. I learned watching both my parents hold down side jobs and always finding extra ways to ensure we had a roof over our head and while growing up I found it tough, somewhere in all of that, I became unbreakable. 

In the End

Our mothers don’t have to be perfect to be worthy of grace. And neither do we. We’re all just learning how to love better (including ourselves) with the tools we’ve got.

I may never fully understand her and I am sure we may never fully understand me, but I think we’re both trying and that, for now, is enough.

This post is dedicated to my mother You were a woman before you were my mother and now as I grow older I finally see you. This is a quiet thank you - for the things I never understood back then and the love I’m learning to recognise now.