Mother's Day When You're Still Healing: Choosing Distance with Love

By Luz María Campuzano

Mother's Day is this Sunday.

For years, I found myself grieving on this day. The relationship with my mother has not always allowed for celebration.

Some years I felt angry. Annoyed. Filled with sadness. Other years I felt completely numb and disconnected. The weight of pretending everything was okay felt heavier with each passing year.

Every year, I forced myself to call her, to spend time with her. I showed up the way I thought a good daughter should, even when it cost me my peace. I didn't honor my needs as her daughter or my needs as a mother. I put myself last to keep the peace.

This year feels different.

This year, I find myself filled with love and with the knowing that I need distance in order to heal. For both of us. So that I can show up in our relationship with love and compassion while also honoring myself.

I haven't figured that out yet, but I'm definitely in the process.

The Women Who Don't Celebrate

If you're one of the women who finds yourself in a wave of emotions during Mother's Day, this message is for you.

You watch other women celebrate their relationships with their mothers. The flowers. The phone calls. The "my mom is my best friend" posts. Each one lands like a reminder of what you don't have.

The sadness for not having this can feel overwhelming. It can make you feel isolated, like something is wrong with you for not being able to just love your mother the way everyone else seems to.

There's a whole pool of us who don't share that experience. We carry complicated relationships with the women who raised us. We love them and we need distance from them. We grieve the mothers we wish we had while honoring the reality of the mothers we do have.

You're not alone.

I Need to Say This First

I love my mother. I love her deeply.

Before I get into the depth of my healing journey from this relationship, I need to make that clear. What I'm about to share doesn't diminish that love. It honors it by finally including myself in its embrace.

From a karmic standpoint, I know I picked a mother who would take me to the depths of my emotional being, make me question myself, shake my sense of security.

It's because of her that I became the mother I am to my children. It's because of her that I'm able to hold space and help my clients navigate through their own healing journeys.

She's the reason I'm so deeply secure in who I am, what I need, and who I'm in the process of becoming.

Without the childhood I had and all of the hurt and traumas, I would never have become the woman I am today.

I have so much love and gratitude for my mother.

It's because of this love that I have repeatedly put my needs last in order to keep the relationship we have. I confused love with self-abandonment. I thought loving her meant losing myself.

When the Pattern Repeats

Things between us had been quiet. For a while, I convinced myself she had changed. That she made the choice to show up with greater awareness. I wanted so badly to believe it was real.

Very recently, something happened. A situation that triggered a response I hadn't felt in years.

My flight response came alive. Every cell in my body screamed to get away, to protect myself. I found myself considering that maybe having her in my life was not the best thing for me.

The thought conjured up an old familiar guilt.

"Am I being a good daughter?"

"Is this fair to her?"

"Am I doing the right thing?"

Growing up with a mother who struggled to see beyond her own needs makes you question everything.

I was taught that putting myself first was selfish. The truth was rewritten so many times that I began to question the reality of my lived experience.

For a long time, I honored my mother's truth that I had a bad memory.

I grew up in a household where speaking the truth got you in trouble. What happened at home was meant to stay at home. Silence was survival. We were expected to handle our situations by sweeping them under the rug and never talking about them again.

I became an expert at pretending. At swallowing my truth. At protecting her reality even when it meant abandoning my own.

There's no growth in sweeping things under the rug. Healing cannot take place when suppressing the truth. Silence doesn't erase what happened.

We cannot break generational cycles without allowing ourselves to honor the depth of our own lived experience. Without giving ourselves permission to say, "This happened. This hurt. This was real."

We no longer live in a time where we are meant to stifle ourselves in order to make others feel comfortable in their lies. I will not sacrifice my healing for her comfort anymore.

The Quote That Changed Everything

I once heard Gabor Maté quote Nietzsche: "People lie their way out of reality who have been hurt by reality."

That quote made so much of my childhood make sense. The contradictions. The rewriting of history. The insistence that things I remembered never happened.

She wasn't being malicious. She was protecting herself from a reality she couldn't face.

I can't help my mother by protecting the lies she made to help her feel safe. I love her too much to contribute to that. Protecting her lies means abandoning my truth, and I've done that for too long.

I'm learning to love myself as fiercely as I've loved her. A love that doesn't require me to disappear in order to exist.

The Breakthrough

One of the things I've learned about myself is how to soothe these triggers. When they come, I don't run from them. I take a step back. I analyze what's happening. I give myself the time to reach a decision that feels right for me.

In this process, I had a breakthrough that changed everything.

I'm not responsible for anyone else but me.

My kids are older now. They don't need me the way they once did. I have a supportive partner. I'm at a sacred moment in my life where I'm being called to deeply nurture myself, to parent myself in the ways I desperately needed as a child.

I've been on a healing journey for years. I've forgiven my mother for how she showed up in my childhood. I understand she lacked the resources, space, and love she needed to heal her own wounds. It took me years to get here, but I can say without any doubt that I forgive her completely.

I've also forgiven myself. I spent so many years taking blame for things that weren't my fault. Believing I was the problem. Carrying shame that was never mine to carry.

Through my healing journey, I learned that loving myself means caring for myself with the tools I've worked so hard to develop. I created boundaries. I got clear on what I'm willing and not willing to accept in my life.

I'm no longer in a place where I can put myself behind her needs. That version of me is gone.

The Karmic Perspective

Trauma stunts our growth. It freezes us in time.

We are souls in evolution, each with our own karma to resolve, our own tapestry of life to weave.

I know that my relationship with my mother is karmic. I'm careful with my choices, aware that I don't want to create more karma for us to resolve in future lifetimes.

My mother is a soul in her own evolution. She has her own lessons to learn, her own path to walk, her own timing.

Knowing that I have a very strong will, I have to be careful that I'm not forcing my will on her. It's not my place to force her to do something her soul isn't ready for. I can't demand that she heal on my timeline just because I've done my work.

My karmic goal is to be in a place where I can be a part of my mother's life while giving her the space to show up exactly where she is in any moment. To hold love and compassion for where she is in her evolution without requiring her to be different in order for me to feel safe.

I'm not there yet. That's why I need distance. Not to punish her, but to do my own work so I can release the expectations that are keeping me from loving her unconditionally.

Where I Am Now

I know my triggers. I know what lowers my vibration. I have the sacred responsibility of being an instrument of healing for others, which requires me to show up at the highest vibration possible.

This recent event triggered a response in me that I haven't experienced in years. I'm so incredibly grateful for it because it showed me there's still work to be done. It also gave me clarity about where I stand in my relationship with my mother.

I love her deeply. That is not a question. I'm also clear that I'm not willing to compromise my needs, my healing, my emotional and vibrational safety.

My current status with my mother is that I'm taking a break from our relationship.

I realize that I have expectations of her that are keeping me from showing up with unconditional love. I understand that she's on her own path with her tapestry of life, with lessons and experiences that will help her grow in ways that are true for her soul's growth.

What I want for her is not relevant. As long as I have these wants for her, I know that I cannot truly be there for her or myself.

So for now, I'm choosing to remove myself from the situation, heal, and work on releasing the expectations I have for her.

I'm finally at a place where I'm okay with that. Free of guilt and full of peace, so much love, and gratitude.

I've been waiting for so long to feel sure about where I'm at. I feel as if I was just blessed with this new state of awareness. This revelation is an incredible milestone in my soul's evolution.

This Mother's Day

This Mother's Day, I don't know what I'll do yet. I don't know if I'll call her. I don't know what choosing me will look like in that moment.

What I do know is that whatever I decide, it will be from a place of honoring myself, not guilt.

If you're in a similar place, still figuring out what your boundaries look like, still learning to choose yourself while loving someone who hurt you, I see you. This work is hard. It's messy. It doesn't follow a timeline.

Regardless if you're a mother or not, I want you to know: You're allowed to still be figuring it out. You're allowed to love someone and need distance from them. You're allowed to honor yourself, even when it's uncomfortable.

This Mother's Day, celebrate yourself. Celebrate the courage it takes to even ask the question: What do I need?

With so much love and gratitude,
Luz María Campuzano