Loving Your Mom

Consider what it means to love others the way they ask to be loved, rather than how you want them to love you. What if you opened your heart to the power of loving without condition?

For years, my relationship with my mother was guarded. Recently, though, grace has brought us full circle. I’ve learned invaluable lessons about love, and my connection with my mother is now sweet and open, and unique to us.

My heart nearly stopped when my brother said last year, “You know, our grandmother believed that love was conditional, that it had to be earned.” 

It has humbled me to understand that my mother was raised in a generation coming out of WWII when children were to be seen and not heard, expectations were clear, and success was defined by accomplishment. 

Because my mom had to earn her mother’s love, she probably felt like she also had to earn her own children’s love. She did whatever she could as a parent to support our accomplishments, but it didn’t always feel to me like she could support our hearts. Because I was more emotionally wired, feeling valued based on what I accomplished didn’t satisfy my desire to feel known and understood. In response, I’ve always tried to care more about who my children are as people than what they do, and I’ve been intentional about moving forward from the conditional kind of love that my mom experienced.

At the heart of life, more than anything, we all want to be loved. We want to feel we belong, and that we are adored by someone – our parents, partners, children, God. Love is like water and air. It sustains us. 

What if we take conditions entirely out of the Love equation and accept and honor others right as and where they are? What if we pause our own opinions long enough to listen for where others are coming from? Can we suspend judgment and justification in order to sense the real need behind another’s words and actions? 

My mom and I are wired differently. How we each express love to others, and what makes us feel loved by others is different. I’ve learned to let that awareness be enough, because I know that our motives are aligned and genuine.

This past year, I gifted Mom a yearlong subscription to a site that prompts and gathers essays into a keepsake book. It’s been a joy for Mom to reminisce and share stories with me each week, knowing that they’ll be bound together for the whole family. She reflected the other day on how different our writing is  – that she focuses on the facts, and I, on the emotions. I smiled, recognizing how happy this process makes her feel, and how freeing it is for me to no longer need her to do the assignment the way I would. I want her to be her, and that’s enough.

Loving my mother better has meant letting go of my own projections of how I think she should deal with the hurts in her own life. She approaches them differently than I would. Loving means not looking back, but forward. It asks me to honor the space of meaningful love that my mother has found for herself within her relationship with God. I have found mine as well. 

There’s a great quote by Maya Angelou that Mom once shared with me, that I often pass on to others:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget
what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

What we say to another, and what we do for them, doesn’t resonate unless it’s genuinely felt. Sometimes that requires us to open our own hearts to the real intent of another’s love and not get hung up on how it’s expressed. This is loving without condition.  

I love the growth that comes from honest reflection! When I called Mom to get her blessing on sharing this essay, it led to such a sweet conversation about childhood, parenthood, individual needs, and mutual understanding. I’m so grateful we’re both embracing this journey together. ❤️