What’s the most impactful thing that your mother ever said to you?

46 comments

  1. She’s said a lot of impactful things and still continues to do so. But the best would be “chase your goals & seek financial freedom, so you won’t have to depend on anyone for anything”
    She said this to me the night before I was scheduled to travel abroad all by myself for my pre-med and I was being homesick already.
    I saw strength in those words and I still am in awe of how much she’s helped shape me to be an independent woman. She’s always offered me tough love, which didn’t make sense back then but it definitely does now.

  3. After u told her about my little brother molesting/raping me for years: “you know can’t tell anybody, right? This is family business.” He proceeded to do the same to every little girl that came through our house and my mom babysat for free for everyone in the family.

    Family was at a football conference/banquet thing for summer school for my brother and I was clinically depressed from being forced into a school environment with 72 hours notice: “Why do you not like to eat in front of people?” That was the only thing she said to me in over a week that wasn’t chore/school related.

    After she dragged me through the living room/kitchen by my EARS and threw me into the wall, and then dad let me take me alone in the car to run some bullshit “errand”: “you know your life isn’t all that bad, right? My parents used to beat us with electrical cords.” Right… like that excuses your fucking behavior.

    We barely speak and will go NC completely after my dad dies.

  5. “Love you.” She was always emotionally closed off and would show love through actions and hardly say the words. I have now moved away but she has started saying she loves me at the end of a phone call. It honestly means so much.

  6. When I asked her if I could spend more time at my dad’s house as we couldn’t spend a day without arguing about something and her first response “No, I’m not paying any fucking child support.”

    Or when I asked her if ultrasound photos I found in a photo album were mine and she said “I threw yours away. What? I can’t keep everything, you know.” She had the ultrasound photos of my two older brothers’ still, though.

  7. When I left 6 months ago to live abroad and she looked at me and said “you can go, I’ll be here holding everything tightly”, that’s when I knew it would be difficult for her, but she was ready to see me fly and make my life. She is a strong woman and I wish she had had a better life.

  8. The best way to be successful, is to do the hardest thing that you really don’t want to do. It’s not the work itself that’s great, but what it gives you that you’ll love.

    And that why I’m studying computer science.

  9. Very little positive things, that’s for sure. Like insulting my weight, calling me a bad daughter, saying I’m horrible like my father (whom she also treated like shit).

  10. “I’m not going to tell you not to do drugs because they’re bad, but I will say you shouldn’t do them because they’re just not the same as they were in the 60/70s” (i.e stronger and more dangerous). Coming from a mother that I saw as being overprotective, this always stuck with me.

  11. We were hanging out together and we were having a decent conversation. All of the sudden she looks at me and gives me how disappointed she is in me. How she doesn’t understand how I was her daughter. That I was nothing like she envisioned. How I was the weirdest out of all my cousins and how my family couldn’t understand it either. I was voted the weirdest out of all my cousins. And she just went on this entire tirade of how I am just a disgrace and how she wanted a different kind of daughter. You know why she thinks I’m weird? Because unlike my cousins I decided to go to college. When she told me all of this I was pretty much the only one of my cousins that did not live at home, was completely financially independent and didn’t have kids. My cousins all lived with a partner or their parents and they had kids that they relied heavily on their parents for childcare and economical help. I guess that’s a good weird to be.

  12. She always told me to live my life in a way that I’d never have to depend on a man to survive or succeed. And if it ever gets to the point when a man isn’t adding something positive to my life, I should leave. You were 100% spot on mom.

  14. “Nobody can take away the things you have in your head”. This is what her father (my grandpa) taught her and my aunt, and both of them passed the message to their daughters

  16. The most impactful thing… there was a night I was having a medical emergency and I was scared to be alone in the hospital. I called my mom asking/telling her I really needed her to be with me; her response was “I can’t leave your 16 year old sibling alone they might go to their crush’s house”. Yet we had family close by my sibling could’ve stayed with or my sibling could’ve came to the hospital with my mom but nope. Growing up my mom never supported me, never encouraged me, or quite frankly it never felt like she loved me. I should’ve been use to her always putting my younger sibling before me but that night crushed me

  17. “That’s why you have no friends and no one likes you”. I was ten years old 🥲

  18. *Why are you not wearing a bra? You look ugly and disgusting.*

    Edit: for context, under my clothes yes. I don’t walk around topless lol not that it’s a bad thing

  19. She told me that the most important criteria in a potential partner is if they treat me well and make me laugh.

  20. “your future children will hate you”

    Said it multiple times to me. Most recent was last week. Why? Because I don’t put up with manipulative tactics she uses. Another time because I asked her to take care of her health and pay her bills.

  21. Me: “they had some people at school today talking to us about college.”

    Her: “College? You’ll be lucky if you get out of high school.”

    I dropped out that year.

  22. She told me that if she ever lost me, she’d lose a part of herself. I think as a teenager you feel so invincible and I needed to understand the impact my potential actions could have on the people that love me.

  23. After we lost our first trimester baby to miscarriage, the first words from her mouth were “well at least you didn’t tell a lot of people.”

  24. She apologized.

    My mom has had a very rough childhood and adulthood. I won’t get into it, but it’s been BAD. Because of that, she’d been in survival mode for most of her life. Crazy amounts of anxiety. Growing up, she wasn’t very present because of life circumstances. She also didn’t know how to take accountability. So, talking to her about how my feelings were hurt was out of the question.

    A while ago, however, she blew up at me over the phone. I didn’t deserve it. I also didn’t advocate for myself because I didn’t see the point and just said bye and hung up. And then, within MINUTES, she called me back and just apologized. Without expecting anything back from me. She had reflected, realized her mistake, and took accountability. No sob story. No deflection or blame. A sincere apology. And, while I know she loves me and often gives good advice and cares about me, her simple apology has been one of the most impactful things that she’s ever said to me.

  25. About her 1st husband, an Air Force captain who died in a plane crash years earlier…”I knew he was unfaithful, I just couldn’t catch him.” WTF. I know it was a different time, but what a miserable marriage

  26. When my Ahole father and I were at our worst and he tried to kick me out of the house (I was 16) she told me “You’ll always have a home here, I’ll deal with your father’ It meant a lot.

  27. I can’t pick just one! My mom is a goddess and I hang on every word she says. I guess I would pick how she always laughs at all my jokes, even when nobody else gets my humor or my jokes are teasing her. She just *gets* me and cherishes me even though I’m a piece of shit. Without that, I don’t know what I would do.

  28. Whatever you want to take in high school, I don’t care, as long as you take typing.

    It was the best advice 😁😁

  30. “You give it 24hours, cry it out. Then you let it go.” After every breakup

    I’ve gotten a little too good at this, thanks mama.

  31. She passed when I was pretty young. But one thing I recall is “how does it feel to want?”. It kinda sucks to want things, especially when you can’t afford even the things you need.

    I went so many years just dealing with bad situations because I felt like I wasn’t supposed to want for more, for better, for anything.

  34. Growing up she always told me “your knowledge is power. Looks and youth and beauty fades so invest in your mind.” She really emphasized education and I’m so grateful for it.

  37. “Let’s look it up.”

    Since I was a small child in the 80’s, if I asked her a question about something I didn’t understand, she’d say that. We’d get the encyclopedia out and find the answer to my question. Don’t rely on what someone else thinks the answer is, find the answer yourself.

  39. “your future children will hate you”

    Said it multiple times to me. Most recent was last week. Why? Because I don’t put up with manipulative tactics she uses. Another time because I asked her to take care of her health and pay her bills.

  40. I will love you whatever you do. There is nothing you can’t tell me.

    If you want to drink alcohol/ use drugs, please tell me. I will stay with you if you want to try, I want you to be in safe hands.

    Working is important, so is relaxing and enjoying life.

  41. Get a good education so you can be self-supportive and will not have to depend on anyone to take care of you.

  46. She told me she regretting having me and that I ruined her life because she had big plans before she got pregnant. She has since taken it back but it has impacted me more than anyone knows. She is a cold woman.

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