I wish my mother liked me.

me & my mother (2006)

They say a mother’s love is unconditional, but what happens when that love feels heavy with conditions? Growing up, I never doubted that my mother loved me. It was clear in the way she put food on the table, took care of my siblings and me, and sacrificed parts of herself to give us more. But love isn’t the same as liking someone and for much of my childhood, I lived with the quiet, constant ache of feeling that my mother didn’t like me.

From an early age, it felt like my relationship with my mother was less of a bond and more of a silent contest. Who succeeded more, who had my father’s attention, who my siblings adored, it all felt like a never-ending scoreboard I didn’t even want to keep track of. And no matter what I did, I always seemed to fall short.

My mother had a way of making it clear that who I was didn’t match up with who she wanted me to be. She’d say things like “Why can’t you be more like…” or “You’re just like your father.” Those words weren’t meant as compliments. They were little reminders that who I was at my core disappointed her.

My mother’s disapproval followed me like a shadow. When I came out as a lesbian, it was as if every unspoken resentment she harbored finally had a name. The way she looked at me changed. Her words became sharper. Her silences, longer. She loved me, I knew that, but it wasn’t the kind of love that felt warm. It was a love that felt like duty something she gave because she had to, not because she wanted to.

My mother grew up without a mother of her own, navigating the world without the guidance or tenderness that comes from that relationship. I can’t imagine how much she must have missed her, especially during the moments when she probably needed her most. And yet, despite this, my mother made it. She graduated high school! a milestone I know wasn’t easy for her to reach.

Then I came along. She was just 17 when I was born, and everything changed. Suddenly, her plans…whatever they might have been, had to shift to make room for me. My father wasn’t always there. He was in and out of jail during the early years of my life, leaving my mother to carry the weight of being a parent mostly on her own.

I’ve always tried to hold space for her grief. To imagine what it must have been like to lose the life she’d once envisioned for herself. To see how much she had to give up just to make sure I had a chance at mine. I try to remind myself of all the ways she did show love, even when it didn’t feel like she liked me.

But that understanding doesn’t erase the tension that defined so much of our relationship. If anything, it deepens it. I wonder now if the part of my mother that didn’t like me wasn’t really about me at all. Maybe it was about the ways I reminded her of the life she didn’t get to have. Of the dreams she set aside. Maybe she saw me and thought, You’re living what I couldn’t. You’re free to be everything I never was.

There’s a kind of loneliness that comes with realizing that the person who brought you into this world doesn’t like who you’ve become or worse, who you’ve always been. I wanted her approval, of course, but more than that, I just wanted to feel like she enjoyed me. That she saw me and thought, they’re cool, interesting, someone I’d want to know even if we weren’t family.

But instead, I became the person she tolerated. The daughter who was too much like her husband, too different from her expectations, and too proud of the parts of myself she couldn’t accept.

It’s taken me years to understand that my mother’s inability to like me wasn’t a reflection of my worth but of her own unresolved pain. And while that realization has brought me some peace, it doesn’t erase the longing I carried for so long.

I still wish my mother liked me. Not in a superficial way, but in the deep, tender way you like someone you truly see. And though I know I can’t change the past, I hope that by writing this, I’m taking one step closer to freeing myself from it.