Complicated Moms

To My Clients Who Struggle with Their Relationships with Their Mothers:

Our relationships with our moms can sometimes be the most complicated ones we’ll ever have—especially for daughters. They’re often layered with love and longing, comfort and confusion, connection and deep ache. I recently read Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel, a book that gave language to something many of women feel but haven’t always known how to name.

She defines mother hunger as “the deep, aching desire to receive the nurturing we needed from our mothers and never got.”

When we’re little, we often see our moms as everything—strong, wise, capable of meeting our needs and always having the answers. As McDaniel puts it, “As little girls, we don’t know how to see the limits of our mother’s emotional availability.” We may not consciously notice what’s missing, but our bodies and hearts often feel the absence in quiet, lasting ways.

As we move through adolescence, we begin to see our moms as flawed and human. But that shift can come with confusion, anger, or grief. Many of us still carry expectations that moms should be omnipotent—that they should handle everything, sacrifice endlessly, and do it all without misstep. This belief isn’t necessarily conscious; it’s woven into how we understand safety, attachment, and identity in our earliest years.

It’s only in adulthood—especially when we begin to reflect on our emotional needs or become caregivers ourselves—that we start to untangle the truth. We realize our moms could never be perfect. They were people, with wounds of their own. And that clarity, while painful, can open the door to healing.

McDaniel writes, “Healing from Mother Hunger means tending to the parts of you that were never nurtured—one gentle, intentional act at a time.”

This kind of healing doesn’t mean pretending the pain didn’t happen or excusing the harm. It means choosing to reparent ourselves, offering the compassion, comfort, and emotional presence we may have always longed for.

It’s not uncommon to wonder, What was wrong with me that I wasn’t loved the way I needed? This self-blame becomes a barrier to healing—and it makes self-compassion feel like a foreign language. But the truth is: it was never about your worth. The love you needed wasn’t missing because you were unlovable. It was missing because your mom may not have known how to give it.

Healing begins when we stop waiting for that love to come from the past, and instead begin giving it to ourselves in the present.

Offering hope,

Katie

Visit self-compassion.org to explore practices that can gently support .

And if you’d like a space to process these feelings in a more personal way, therapy can be a place where you’re seen and heard—sometimes for the first time in exactly the way you needed.

These thoughts come from my experience as a therapist and a human. They’re not medical or mental health advice. Everyone’s journey is different—please reach out for support if you need it.