Her Mother Always Said "I Was a Good Mother" — Why Your Mother Can't Apologise
- 23 hours ago
- 6 min read
Why can’t my mother apologise? If you keep leaving conversations with her feeling bewildered, angry, and somehow guilty for bringing it up at all, you are not alone. Many women caught in the mother wound apology cycle believe the missing piece is the right wording, the right setting, or one more conversation that will finally help their mother see the pain she caused. But often, it ends with her defending herself, reframing her choices, or simply not seeing what you needed her to see. In over a decade of working with women on healing the mother wound, this is one of the most painful places I witness women getting stuck. What keeps the cycle going is not a lack of effort. It is that you are still being pulled into the role you were given as a child: the one who understands, explains, and makes room for her, while your own pain waits for permission.
REGISTRATION TO THE WORKSHOP OPENS THIS FRIDAY, APRIL 17
First 8 women to join within 24 hours receive a FREE 1:1 with me
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The Conversation That Always Ends the Same Way
One of my former clients, Theresa, tried having several conversations with her mother, in an attempt to receive an acknowledgement—an apology—for the way she had been left alone as a child.
Each conversation followed the same pattern.
No matter how gently Theresa phrased her words. No matter what setting she arranged. No matter how many different angles she tried. Her mother's response was always the same:
"I was a good mother!”
And then: "I gave you food and clothed you, didn't I? You lived in one of the most prestigious neighbourhoods — far more than I had at your age.”
Why Can't My Mother Apologise — What's Really Happening
Theresa knew her mother's story—that she had lost her own mother at two years old, grown up in poverty, and worked hard.
As a single mother and talented artist herself, Theresa understood the forces working against women trying to balance a meaningful life with being present for their daughter.
So she would preface her words in our sessions with "others had it worse than me" and "I know she did the best she could.”
And yet — none of that understanding reduced by one ounce the intensity of her sense of betrayal.
Her mother had spent weeks and months away from home. There was a glorious house and a nanny, yes. But not the mother she needed.
Understanding her mother's circumstances did not touch her pain.
Each time Theresa had these conversations, she wasn't approaching them from the adult's seat.
Because when a mother places her own unmet needs before your own from very early on in your relationship, when she repeatedly stressed the impact of her own childhood wounds or unfulfilled dreams as the context for being unavailable to meeting yours, she had already framed the relationship's roles—you in the understanding one while she’s in the distressed one.
When Understanding Your Mother Becomes a Trap
Now, each time you bounce back to understanding (with or without prefacing), it’s as if you’re back in the confused child’s seat—the dependent, bewildered girl who genuinely could not understand why her mother couldn't simply see how much she had been hurt.
And because you’re used to being the understanding one, you also:
🌻 Understand your partner each time they deflect when you say they acted like a child rather than the partner you needed them to be
🌻 Understand the reasons why your colleagues or clients keep crossing your boundaries, unable to enforce the relationship frameworks that are supportive for you
🌻 Bring your understanding to friends' problems and needs while feeling alone with your own
Waiting for an apology keeps your healing in your mum's hands. Your mother can’t apologise because she hasn’t left the child’s seat—but you can.
That is the moment you stop being the daughter who waits — and become the woman who chooses.
Taking Your Healing Out of Her Hands
Moving beyond understanding, accepting or forgiving your mother and centring around meeting your unmet childhood needs is how you’re taking your healing back into your hands.
This is the driving force of the coming workshop, It’s Not About Forgiveness.
In the workshop, you could:
🌻 Restore some of the emotional safety you lost in childhood so you can shift to your adult seat and ask different questions, such as, “How to meet my needs without guilt?”
🌻 Gain insight on some of the habits that keep you trapped in asking “why can’t she apologise” or “why can’t I accept or forgive?" and start asking “how can I live my life more fully?”
🌻 Begin some repair for the abandonment wound in a community of women like you who have personal insight about the mother wound
The mother wound is a rupture in your relationship to yourself, others, and life itself, originating in the rupture with your mother.
And each time your mother placed her needs, struggles, unfulfilled dreams, unresolved trauma and her emotional limitations before fulfilling your emotional, psychological and physical needs from her, the rupture widens.
Each time you default to understanding, it’s as if you patch a rupture that’s still aching.
The coming workshop, It's Not About Forgiveness, helps you shift the focus of your understanding so it's no longer either you or her.
When you join the waiting list, you’ll be the first to get an email when registration opens on Friday, April 17th, and you could be one of the eight women who receive a bonus 1:1 session with me
The workshop is where you may gain insight about one habit that leads you to seek acknowledgements that never come, from your mother or others in your life. The 1:1 is where we can integrate that insight and transform it into actionable change
This bonus session will be shaped by the immediate, small and significant shift you’d like to initiate, and it could look like:
🌻 Discovering new ways to engage with the unfilled acknowledgement so you no longer seek to fulfil this hole from unavailable partners
🌻 Getting clear on the inner child habit that keeps you looping back into why — so you can recognise the moment you slip into the child's seat and begin choosing, from the adult's seat, what you actually want to do next
🌻 Laying the foundations of emotional safety so you can begin the identity shift you're ready for — from the daughter who waits for acknowledgement, to the woman who knows her own worth without it
YOU ARE INVITED:
It’s Not About Forgiveness
A Relational and Somatic Workshop for Undermothered Women who've spent years
trying to understand, forgive, or fix their relationship with their mother—
and want to find what's possible when they centre around themselves instead
Registration opens Friday 17th April — the first 8 women to join within 24 hours receive a FREE 1:1 with me (to be used by 15th May)
After joining, you’ll receive an email with:
🌻 A link to the workshop and to book your 1:1 session if you’re one of the 8 women who got the bonus—available to book between April 17th up until May 15th, the latest
🌻 All participants of the workshop will be offered a sweet bonus at the end of the workshop
Got any questions about the works?
You can reply directly to this email or DM me on IG
**P.S.** Aching for acknowledgment or an apology from your mother can feel, each time, like you are hitting a wall of yearning. The new workshop is focused on helping you heal the mother wound by discovering the ways beyond forgiveness or apology. Registration to It’s Not About Forgiveness opens on Friday, April 17th 👉save your spot here
**P.P.S.** Want more than laying the foundations for an identity shift? Recentre, your 1:1 container for healing the mother wound helps you make this happen. Start with a complimentary call.
NOT READY FOR THIS NOW?
NO PROBLEM!
If you need more reassurance that you & I can make a genuine difference to healing your mother wound, here's something you'll enjoy:
Learn how to stop making an effort to fill in a hole in the heart with healing the mother wound in my private podcast, BirthRite. Add your details below, and you'll get immediate access to your free episodes 👇
Shelly 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 recentre back into the life they're meant to live
