7 Things You Don’t Owe Mom On Mother’s Day

“Because Mother is our first love and our needs are so strong during our early years, it’s very hard to let go of the desire to finally win her love.” - Jasmine Lee Cori

Photo taken by me at the always adorable Hops Petunia.

Mother’s Day arrives each year with a script the world expects you to follow: celebrate her, appreciate her, honor her—no exceptions.

But what if your mother wasn’t someone you could reliably turn to for love, nurturing, or support? What if she was controlling, abusive, dismissive, absent, or emotionally unavailable in the moments you needed her most?

Suddenly Mother’s Day stops feeling like a celebration and starts feeling like a reminder—a reminder of the mother you needed, but never had.

Maybe you feel guilty for not wanting to call or text her today. Maybe you feel ashamed for not feeling the things all the Hallmark cards insist you should feel. Maybe what rises up is grief, anger, confusion—or nothing at all, just a familiar numbness formed in the years you had no choice but to raise yourself.

Whatever you’re feeling today—or not feeling—is valid. There is no “right” emotional response to Mother’s Day when your relationship with your mother has been painful, unsafe, or chronically dysfunctional. Your emotions aren’t signs of failure. They are reflections of your lived experience.

You don’t have to pretend this day is easier than it is.

You don’t have to manufacture gratitude you don’t feel.

You don’t have to set yourself on fire to keep your mother warm.

You’re allowed to name what’s true for you. You’re allowed to hold boundaries that protect your well-being.

And when you can stand firmly in these truths, the pressure around this day begins to shift. You start to see that what the world says you “owe” your mother on Mother’s Day is based on other people’s fantasies—not on your reality.

Below are seven of the most common Mother’s Day scripts you can set down—and the truths you deserve to rest in instead.

1. You don’t owe your mother a gift.

A gift only holds meaning when it is freely given—not when it comes from obligation, duty, or fear.

If the thought of buying something for your mom on Mother’s Day brings up feelings of dread, anxiety, guilt, or the sense that you’d have to betray yourself to do it, that’s your body telling you the truth. You can trust that signal. It’s wisdom, not selfishness.

Giving to avoid conflict or to manage your mom’s emotions is not generosity. It’s a coping strategy you learned in order to survive.

Having a tough time deciding? Here’s my Giving Guidelines I share with clients:

1. If giving allows you to stay true to yourself, go ahead and give.

2. If giving requires you to betray or abandon yourself, don’t.

Your well-being is worthy of protection.

2. You don’t owe your mother a card.

When you have the mother wound, standing in the Mother’s Day card aisle can feel like being asked to rewrite your own history. Every pastel-colored card assumes a bond full of love, nurturing, and care. When that wasn’t your experience, those messages don’t feel sweet; they feel disorienting, invalidating, and sometimes even triggering.

A Mother’s Day card is not just a piece of paper. It communicates something. It communicates: Thank you for mothering me well.

If you were not mothered in ways that felt consistently safe and supportive, offering gratitude to the person who failed you isn’t “being a good person.” It’s asking yourself to disconnect from your own truth. It’s self-abandonment.

You don’t have to search for the “least inaccurate” card. You don’t have to pick up a blank one and try to invent syrupy sentiments that aren’t there. You don’t have to soften your truth to make your mom comfortable.

Honesty is not unkind. What’s unkind is asking yourself to pretend.

Your integrity matters more than shrinking yourself to fit a narrative that isn’t true.

3. You don’t owe your mother celebration.

You are allowed to opt out of celebrating your mother on Mother’s Day. Opting out does not make you cold, ungrateful, or unloving.

It makes you someone who is honoring the truth of the relationship, not the revisionist history others—including your mom—might want to believe.

You don’t have to perform closeness you don’t feel. You don’t have to participate in a narrative that erases your lived experience.

Your well-being does not need to be sacrificed on the altar of anyone else’s denial.

4. You don’t owe your mother a call or text.

You didn’t come into this world owing your mother a lifetime of communication on Mother’s Day (or any other day). No baby signs a contract agreeing to obligatory FaceTime calls, guilt-tripped check-ins, or emotional performances to shield their parents from the consequences of their own actions.

Your mother may expect acknowledgment. She may believe she is entitled to it. But her main character energy does not get to determine your choices.

Choosing not to reach out to someone you never asked to know—someone who held all the power in the relationship and still chose to harm you—is not failure. It’s self-preservation.

If contact feels unsafe, destabilizing, or dishonest, you are allowed to refrain.

5. You don’t owe your mother your time.

Your time is yours. You get to choose how you spend it and who you spend it with. When proximity requires self-abandonment, distance becomes an act of self-care.

You are under no obligation to share your limited time on this planet with someone who refuses to meet you with the respect and accountability you deserve. Time spent with your mother, of all people, should not cost you your emotional well-being or your sense of self.

If being with her leaves you feeling anxious, on edge, depleted, or disconnected from your truth, that is a red flag about the relationship—not a personal failing.

6. You don’t owe your mother access to your children.

Your children are your children before they are your mother’s grandchildren. You are responsible for their well-being in ways your mother is not, which means her desire to see them will never supersede your duty to keep them safe.

Grandchildren are not here to assuage the guilt of their grandmothers. They do not exist to offer redemption or provide second chances to mothers who harmed their own children.

If your mother can’t recognize your full humanity, she’s not magically going to recognize your child’s. If she sees you as nothing more than an extension of her, she’s not suddenly going to develop the attunement, empathy, or respect she never offered you.

Sparing children from harmful grandmothers isn’t “using your children as pawns.” It’s doing your job as a parent. You never should have been put in this position to begin with.

7. You don’t owe your mother love.

Love, like every other feeling, cannot be forced. Love cannot be summoned. It cannot be pressured. It cannot be willed into existence out of guilt, fear, or obligation.

Love is not owed because someone gave birth. It is not a debt you inherit. It is not something you must manufacture to make someone who harmed, abused, abandoned, or neglected you more comfortable. And treating mothers as exceptions to this rule isn’t good for anyone—mothers included.

You don’t owe your mother a feeling you were never given the care you needed to develop. That’s not betrayal—it’s clarity.

Final Thoughts

Despite the smiling images we see plastered across social media, Mother’s Day isn’t all brunches and bouquets. For millions of mother wound survivors, it stirs up a wake of painful emotions and memories.

Whatever comes up for you this Mother’s Day is a reflection of your lived experience, not a reflection of your worth. You are not wrong for protecting yourself. You are not ungrateful for telling the truth. You are not cold for choosing distance over self-abandonment. You are simply honoring reality and keeping yourself safe.

You do not owe your mother the fruits of a relationship she failed to foster. You do not owe the world a story that erases what you lived through. You do not owe anyone a version of yourself that costs you your peace.

What you owe yourself is honesty. What you owe yourself is safety. What you owe yourself is a life that no longer requires shrinking to make other people comfortable.

And that matters more than any script, any expectation, or any holiday ever will.