It Was Never Your Job to Save Your Mum

Did you grow up believing it’s their job to keep their mother stable, calm, or emotionally safe? I’ve seen how this instinct becomes a lifelong survival response—one that feels like love, but functions like self-abandonment. This post unpacks why you were never meant to save your mum, how enmeshed relationships form, and what shifts when you finally put that burden down.

Did you know that during pregnancy some of the foetus’s cells cross the placenta and can live in the mother’s organs for years, ready to help her if she’s under threat?

This is a remarkable biological reminder to the instinct a daughter carries—even before birth—to keep her mother safe.

If you grow up believing it’s your job to soothe, stabilise or maintain her well being, what once served as a survival “tool kit” quietly becomes your normal.

This is how you get into a fused relationship with your mother (sometimes called co-dependent or enmeshment—though you know I’m not fond of pathology language).

Women who feel responsible for their mother’s emotional, mental or spiritual well-being often carry deep guilt.

It looks like:

🐚 Thinking you’re betraying her whenever you talk about your relationship

🐚 Feeling distress when thinking of taking less charge over her well being

🐚 An inner jittery feeling as if you’re doing something terribly wrong, or—you are wrong

🐚 Feeling like a failure when you’re not fulfilling your mother’s dreams

🐚 Fearing having a better life than your mum ever got to have

Guilt isn’t a sign that you’re doing something wrong.

It’s a sign that your system was trained to believe it’s your job to save your mum.

This was exactly Jenera’s burden.*

She had married and moved across the world to live with her partner—intentionally creating a distance from her mum.

After losing both her younger brother and then her father, she felt compelled to move back to support her mum.She reached out to me shortly after returning to her homeland.

Jenera struggled with finding balance between grieving with her mum and maintaining her independence.

In our very first session she said:

“She’s so skilled at asking the same thing in a million different ways until I accidentally share what I didn’t want to—and I snap at her and feel guilty.”

That told me that the mother lacked healthy sense of boundaries and was feeding off her daughter socially and emotionally in ways that drained her.

That’s what a fused relationship looks like.When you’re fused with your mother, part of you stays a little girl in survival mode, trying to:

🐚 Ease her loneliness by keeping her company

🐚 Prevent her from feeling left out by sharing intimate details of your life

🐚 Keep her from falling apart by involving her in your trips

🐚 Stepping to sort things out when she’s gotten intoxicated or in a financial mess

🐚 Avoid upsetting her by hardly ever saying no

When it’s a default and you’re doing all this as a way of saving her, you’re not ‘really good friends’ or ‘having an amazing closeness.’This is a body memory—an ancient survival imprint whispering, “I must keep her safe.”

Like many undermothered women, Jenera lived at the crossroads of two painful truths—She loved her mother and was exhausted from trying to save her.

It reflects a common dilemma of women exploring the mother wound, wondering “how long will I need to go back to therapy for healing this?”The questions I invite them to consider instead are:

How long do you want to:

🐚 Feel trapped each time she expects you to bring her along to your friend’s dinner

🐚 Feel suffocated when she places her emotional breakdown on your shoulders

🐚 Feel unseen when she doesn’t ask how are you on a call

🐚 Feel sorrow when she can’t embrace your bubbly personality

Healing the mother wound is relationship healing—and like all relationships, it unfolds in layers.

The mother wound creates a rupture in our relationship with ourselves, with others, and with life itself — a rupture that starts in our relationship with our mother.

Jenera wanted to find her own answers and started with a 6-month 1:1 package.We first uncovered how a fused relationship shaped her:

🐚 She struggled to express her needs with friends

🐚 She longed for a partner yet feared her privacy would be invaded

🐚 Working long hours on her business became an escape

🐚 Sharing a home and dog-care duties with her mum felt intensely triggering 

With each realisation came more space, more individuation and more capacity emerged to stop rescuing her mother–and ask “what do I want?”

By the end of our work, Jenera felt she had stepped into a new life and a new kind of family, and she:

🐚 Found a partner willing to move forward at her pace

🐚 Reduced her working hours and eventually followed her passion for studying permaculture 

🐚 Decided—guilt-free—how much time she wanted to spend with her mum

Most importantly, Jenera realised she could:

Love her mother without saving her

Prioritise herself without betraying her

I’m confident that in the 1:1 process I’m offering, you too can be freed from the burden of needing to save your mum and find the life balance you desire.

If you’re ready for this, I’d love for you to take advantage of my current 1:1 rates, before they increase on December 15. You can schedule a free call by Friday, December 12, at the latest.

During the free call, you’ll get a sense of what it’s like to step away from the role of your mum’s caretaker—so you can experience a gentle shift right there on the call. YOUR NEXT STEPS:

🐚 Schedule a free call via the link below & receive a confirmation email in your inbox

🐚 Reserve 40-60 minutes so we can create a safe space for sharing and exploring your immediate next steps

🐚 If we’re a good fit: I’ll invite you to purchase your package by December 14 to lock in current rates

🐚 Book your first session: right away or by end of January 2026

INQUIRE NOW

P.S. Ready to drop the sense that you’re betraying your mum when healing the mother wound? Then book a free call here to make use of my offer at current 1:1 rates, before the increase on December 15.

P.P.S. Not sure yet? Get a taste of my unique way of healing the mother wound and listen to my free private podcast, BirthRite

*Jenera is a pseudonym name

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Shelly's is a trauma-informed, certified Hakomi therapist helping women who've had a complex relationship with their mother discover the hidden impacts of the mother wound 👉 so they can thrive in their lives & careers