How Your Relationship With Your Mother Affects Your Relationship With Money

For years, I couldn't understand what happened to my finances every time I visited my mother.

I would arrive home with good intentions and a healthy bank balance but by the time I left, I'd spent far more money than I'd planned. I felt emotionally exhausted, financially drained, and completely confused.

It happened over and over again.

At first, I blamed my budget, then I blamed my lack of discipline and told myself I simply needed to become better with money.

But eventually I realized that money wasn't the real issue.

I was.

Or more accurately, the little girl inside me who was still trying to earn her mother's approval.

Spending Money Became a Love Language

Whenever I visited my mother, I felt an overwhelming pressure to prove myself.

I wanted her to be proud of me, to see me and to acknowledge everything I had achieved.

Without realizing it, I started using money as one of the ways I tried to earn that recognition.

I would spend more than I intended.

I would give more than I could comfortably afford.

I found it difficult to say no.

I kept hoping that if I just did enough, gave enough, or achieved enough, I would finally receive the validation I’d been longing for.

It never happened.

No matter how much I did, I still left feeling unseen.

A lot of my visits ended with me crying and wondering what was wrong with me.

I couldn't understand why I kept trying so hard when nothing ever seemed to change.

The Contradiction I Couldn't See

There was another layer to the story that took even longer to recognize - part of me desperately wanted financial success and another part of me felt deeply uncomfortable having money.

Growing up, I had witnessed my mother's struggles and somewhere along the way, my nervous system made an unconscious decision: “If I have more than my mother had, I am betraying her.”

So I lived with an intense duality: one part of me wanted to build wealth and another part wanted to stay loyal to the struggle that had shaped my family.

No wonder my finances felt like feast and famine.

Every time I created more money, another part of me found a way to give it away, spend it, or make myself smaller.

My money story wasn’t about money, it was about love, loyalty, guilt, and belonging.

The Healing Was Never About Changing My Mother

For a long time, I believed the answer was fixing my relationship with my mother…

If I could just say the right thing...

If I could heal enough...

If I could become the daughter she wanted...

Maybe everything would finally feel different.

But the greatest shift happened when I stopped trying to change her and started asking a different question: “How can I stop abandoning myself in this relationship?”

I realized I didn't have to stay in conversations that overwhelmed me.

I didn't have to ignore my body's signals when I no longer felt emotionally safe.

And I gave myself permission to leave when I needed to and stopped measuring my worth by whether I could finally earn my mother's approval.

I wasn't giving up on the relationship with my mother; I was choosing not to lose myself inside it.

The Freedom Extended Far Beyond My Family

Something unexpected happened when I stopped trying to earn love…my relationship with money began to change.

Without the constant pressure to prove myself, I found it easier to save and receive money without guilt and feeling like I was betraying my mother, which led to a growth in my business and income.

Eventually, my business reached more than US$100,000 in annual revenue.

Those financial changes didn’t happen because I was great at business strategy, they happened because there was a deeper internal shift within me and I was no longer asking money to do the impossible.

I wasn't asking money it to make me feel worthy or to help me win my mother's approval.

Money could finally just be a resource, not a measure of whether I was lovable.

Letting Go of the Relationship I Wished I Had

One of the hardest parts of healing was grieving the mother-daughter relationship I had imagined.

For years, I kept trying to create a relationship that didn't exist.

Healing asked me to stop relating to the fantasy and begin relating to reality.

Ironically, that's when my relationship with my mother began to change, not because I had finally convinced my mother to become someone different, but because I was different.

Years ago, if someone had told me my mother would one day gift land to my sister and I, I wouldn't have believed them.

If someone had told me she would support me through some of the most emotionally difficult seasons of my life or insist on giving generously to me, I would have laughed.

None of those things happened because I finally became worthy of them; they happened after I stopped organizing my life around trying to earn them.

Sometimes Healing Changes the Relationship. Sometimes It Doesn't.

One of the greatest lessons I've learned is that our parents may never love us in exactly the way we hoped they would.

They may never become who we needed them to be.

Healing isn't about making someone else change, it's about freeing yourself from needing them to. and sometimes that creates a closer relationship and healthier boundaries.

And sometimes it means walking away.

Every family story is different.

But what remains true is that when we stop abandoning ourselves in search of love, we stop abandoning ourselves with money too because our financial patterns are a reflection of our relationship patterns.

And when we begin healing one, the other begins to heal as well.