What Our Mothers Taught US
I have been missing my mom a great deal lately. She transitioned in March of 2018, and not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of her. But this month feels different. Her presence has been especially close.
I’ve been thinking about the things she taught me, not only through her words, but through the way she lived.
Some of those lessons were beautiful: resilience, loyalty, devotion to family, perseverance. But some of what I absorbed no longer serves me. The biggest ones are a scarcity mindset and a deep feeling that somehow I don’t matter as much as everyone else.
My mother lived through the Great Depression. She watched my father carry the weight of World War II. She lost her own father at a young age and carried resentment about how little security was left behind for her family. Worry became part of her identity. She worried about money, about waste, about whether there would be enough. Even when there was enough, it still felt fragile to her.
And she passed that fear on to her children.
What I understand now is that she wasn’t trying to limit us. She was trying to protect us. Scarcity was the language she understood. It was the world she came from. Abundance probably felt unrealistic or undeserved.
If you are in your 60s or older, you may understand exactly what I mean. So many of our parents came from survival. They learned to hold tightly, prepare for loss, expect hardship, and sacrifice themselves for everyone else.
The feeling of not mattering came from other places.
A family with six children and a husband who works constantly leaves little room for a woman to fully see herself. I imagine my mother gave endlessly and often felt unseen in return. She was thrilled when I arrived after four boys. Finally, a daughter! But I did not make it easy for her. I built walls early. Walls that said, “I’ll take care of myself.” Walls that protected me, but also kept her out.
I am grateful my sister came along six years later. She let my mother in. They became companions in a way my mother always longed for.
In a family with five men, I often felt unprotected, and I expected her to rescue me emotionally. What I understand now is that she needed protecting, too.
As I reflect on all of this, I now realize she did the best she could with what she knew and what life handed her. Everything she taught me came through the filter of love, fear, survival, and her own unmet needs.
I forgave my mother long ago. But what I had not fully done was forgive myself.
Forgive myself for carrying beliefs that were never truly mine.
Forgive myself for believing I had to earn my worth.
Forgive myself for not allowing my mother to know the real me more deeply.
Forgive myself for expecting her to protect wounds she herself never learned how to heal.
I think this is true for so many mothers and daughters.
Each generation passes down what it believes will help the next survive. Today, it may look different. Fear now shows up as overprotection, anxiety, control, or helicopter parenting. Many parents are trying so hard to shield their children from pain and prepare them for success that they unintentionally prevent them from learning resilience, self-trust, and independence.
But underneath it all is still love.
Imperfect, human, wounded love.
Our mothers were not meant to be perfect. They were women carrying their own childhoods, losses, disappointments, fears, and inherited beliefs. They taught us what they knew. And now it becomes our responsibility to lovingly decide what we keep and what we release.
Healing begins when we can hold two truths at once:
Our mothers loved us deeply.
And some of what we learned from them no longer serves who we are becoming.
I would love for us to begin talking more openly about this — not from blame, but from understanding. What did your mother teach you about love, money, relationships, success, sacrifice, or self-worth? What beliefs did you inherit that helped shape your life? Which ones still support you, and which ones are you ready to release?
There is something deeply healing about sharing our stories and realizing we are not alone. So many of us are carrying inherited fears, patterns, and beliefs that were passed down quietly through generations. When we bring them into the light with compassion, we create the possibility for something new not only for ourselves, but for the generations that follow us.
It is time to let go of the limiting beliefs.
The scarcity.
The guilt.
The feeling that we are too much or not enough.
The belief that our needs do not matter.
It is time to forgive our mothers for the stories they unknowingly passed down.
And maybe even more importantly, it is time to forgive ourselves for continuing to carry them.