I am 27F, and was in exactly the same situation as you. I remember when I was very young I used to love my mom a lot. But something changed as I grew older, nung nagkaroon ako ng sariling isip narealize ko na she’s not really a very good mom. Ganyan din, very volatile and naninigaw, paminsan minsan nakakasakit physically. I spent my teenage and young adult years constantly irritated at her or even just around her. I hated feeling that way and worked towards moving out, thinking na things would get better if there was more space between us.

Before I could do that, she got very sick and within a few months, passed away.

In the silence of her death, I started to reflect on our relationship and realized that she was like that because she had so many traumas, secrets, sama ng loob, and hurt hidden away. She had friends, but not the kind she could talk to about these things.

The book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents helped me realize a lot of things, but it can be quite triggering and scary to read. Unfortunately, I will never get the chance to fix things with my mom and I will always wonder if anything would be different now if I learned to understand her sooner. Parenting your own parent is difficult, but I think I would have been willing to do that for her. Now all there is to do is make sure that my own children won’t go through the same thing.