I grew up with a mother who loved me, but she left far too early

I grew up with a mother who loved me, but she left far too early.

Her absence made me search for nurturing in places that couldn’t hold it. It made me question whether warmth would always be followed by loss.

Whether being cared for meant I had something to lose. And for years, I hardened without even realizing it. I became self-reliant. Processing my thoughts and emotions alone.

The relationship a man has with his mother leaves an imprint on how he gives and receives love.

The relationship a woman has with her father, shapes how she trusts love.

I’ve worked with so many women whose fathers were present but emotionally unavailable. Or kind but distant. Or loving but unpredictable. And what that creates is a nervous system that doesn’t fully trust men.

Her earliest blueprint told her: love means waiting, hoping, scanning, adjusting. Being a good girl. Being quiet. Being small enough to be tolerated and good enough to be chosen. And furious when it doesn’t go as she wants to, the repressed disappointment and anger she holds on towards her father.

Even the strongest, most brilliant women I’ve coached, women who’ve built careers, traveled the world, done the healing work, still carry a sliver of that question:

“Am I really safe?”

And so she tests. She holds back. She over-explains. Or she over-gives. Not because she’s trying to be manipulative. But because she learned young that if she didn’t work for love, it wouldn’t come.

The moment you realize you’re not broken, but patterned, everything shifts. You stop making your present partner pay for your past father. You stop seeking validation in men who echo your early wounds. And you start making new choices from the woman you are now, not the girl you once were.

I’ve had to do that too, and still it shows up in moments where I react instead of respond.

The relationship we had with our parents is the lens we unconsciously carry into our relationships with each other.

However, it’s not fixed.

It’s not final.

It’s just a starting point.

And we get to choose where it goes from here.