How to Love Your Mother

This essay was first published on Chicago Story Press in January 2026.

“I’m sorry for what I did to you when you were little.”

I was studying for a master’s degree in marital and family therapy when my mother said those words to me.

She asked me to join her on the sofa—a green recliner whose color had faded over the years, but it matched the pea-yellow-green walls I found so atrocious.

I stood.

In tears, voice wavering, my mom went on. “I was too hard on you. It hurt you, and I know that now. Maybe you can forgive me. Maybe you can’t. I still have to tell you.”

She didn’t know why she was so strict, why she needed to be so controlling. She told me about her own childhood of neglect. “I really was always proud of you,” she said.

I could never tell.

“I told everyone at church how proud I was. Ask anyone.”

Why couldn’t she have told me?

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

Still, I stood.

“Don’t you have anything you want to say?”

I shook my head.

“We should communicate. You can tell me. I won’t get mad.”

Years of messaging to the contrary sealed my lips. “Is that all?” I asked before retreating to my room.

As long as I can remember, my relationship with my mother has been contentious. One of my recurring laments growing up was, “You don’t understand me”—one she hated hearing.

I wanted to be understood, to be heard.

She didn’t know how to hear me. “You are too sensitive,” she often told me.

We seemed to function on wildly different wavelengths, speaking different languages—exacerbated by generational and cultural differences. She, a Taiwanese immigrant, and I, her American-born daughter.

As I grow older, memories become fuzzier like grainy photographs losing a little more detail each year. But I remember long nights standing at the foot of my parents’ bed. Long lecture sessions for whatever I’d done wrong that day to deserve it. My dad would be asleep. And my mom would alternate between glaring at me and lecturing. The only light came from a small lamp on her nightstand. In the night, it cast long, grotesque shadows along the walls, on the ceiling, and on my mom’s face. Mirrors lining their bed frame looked beautiful in daylight but only added to the horror in the dark. My sleep-deprived brain distorted her visage into a gargoyle.

Sometimes she would have me face the wall instead. I grew familiar with the textures on the wall—the cracks and wrinkles—the way the light fell and created shadows in the tiny grooves depending on the time of night or which light was switched on in that room. My mind would wander to distract from blows and screams, painting worlds within those caverns on the wall. Two a.m. makes for a vivid, if somewhat delusional imagination. It was my world, and I pretended if I just concentrated hard enough, I could shrink and fall right into the canyons I pictured on the wall.

My first therapist shocked me by saying I’d suffered child abuse.

How could things so normal that happened every day be abusive?

Today, I can admit it was. They continue to have a lingering impact that I still have to work through. When I mess up, my mom is still the critical voice I hear in my head.

And because humans are gloriously messy and complicated and full of nuance, I realized that she did the best she could with the tools she had available to her.

My mom is not a monster, although I definitely wrote those words in my diary once when I was younger. She is someone who gives repeatedly to others without hesitation. Countless people have told me how she changed their lives thanks to her support of them through horrendous times. My mom sacrificed so much time and energy for congregants at her church, caring for them, listening to them, counseling them.

But when people told me how lucky I was to have parents like mine, my brother and I always looked at each other, thinking, “That’s because you don’t live with them.”

The truth was that in giving so much to the church, I often felt like the sacrificial lamb.

Because I’ll never forget the time my parents spent hours counseling other couples, but when I asked if they would come with my fiancé and me to do premarital counseling for a weekend, they said they were too busy. I broke down sobbing and asked them why they gave so willingly to others but wouldn’t do the same for me.

Yet when I am out in the world, I end up being the beneficiary of my parents’ sacrifices. Those who have been touched by them over the years treat me with generosity and care because of them.

So, am I really losing? You know, I don’t know.

I spent much of my life making excuses for the way my mother treated me to myself and others. Perhaps this is why even many of those who grew up with me only know a fraction of my story.

Most of the time, mothers love their children. They don’t set out to cause harm. By the time I’d reached adulthood, my mother often said, “Parents just want their children to be happy.”

Did my mom love me?

It was a question I asked myself a lot, especially by the time I got to middle and high school. I never felt like I was good enough. Each morning, I prayed she wouldn’t get mad at me that day. That prayer went unanswered every single day.

Now, I know my mom loved me the way she knew how. She just didn’t love herself, which spilled over to make it seem like she didn’t love me either. Because I knew enough of her story to know she tried her best in a country she didn’t know, raising two children on her own while caring for a husband battling cancer. She fought her own demons. Some of them burst out and attacked others.

I later learned that my maternal grandma—who helped raise me and whom I only ever knew as my sweet wàipó, comforted me when I cried and brought me to K-Mart to pick out toys, and gave me my first diary—also treated my mom horribly. My grandma treated her with disdain because she had a disabled leg from contracting polio when she was three years old.

Once, my mom told me, “I talked to grandma about how I know she’s not proud of me and that’s why she never brags about me like she brags about my sisters. She just denies it. I said she didn’t have to deny it or pretend, but she doesn’t want to face it.”

But that is not an excuse, only an explanation. And I’m now old enough to realize the difference.

One therapy session, I brought up my mom’s apology from all those years ago—the one I couldn’t accept.

“She didn’t know what she was apologizing for, and I don’t think either of my parents will ever understand or acknowledge the impact of what they did,” I said.

My therapist has a way of speaking with a gentleness while conveying difficult truths. “You may have to come to terms with the very real possibility that you may never get the acknowledgement and closure you’re looking for. They may simply be incapable of it.” She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “What will you do if you never get it?”

It was a question I had to reckon with, to consider if I could make my peace with it.

Even so, I found some redemption in our relationship along the way, despite skirting past the past. Only during conflicts did the truth burst out, revealing the unhealed wounds: The emotional volatility that kept me guessing. The shaming. The sudden temper outbursts that had me ducking from thrown objects but trapped by ingrained obedience and fear. Those memories were embedded into my marrow, unacknowledged.

“I made mistakes, but I was not that bad,” became a repeated refrain from her whenever these conflicts arose.

Then there was gaslighting—claims that things I remembered vividly had never happened.

Scars would reopen. Deepen.

This, to me, was evidence that my mother’s apology to me those many years ago fell short of genuine understanding. She believed she hurt me by being too strict; in reality, the harm went much deeper than that. I believed she was in denial about the damage she caused, unable to reconcile the idea that despite desiring to be a good mother, she had often failed.

Everything came to a head one month early last year. I wrote a long, detailed email to my parents, where I laid out nearly every grievance from childhood to the present day. I emphasized the persistent hurt.

I didn’t expect anything. It was meant as a final “fuck you” before cutting them out of my life indefinitely.

Their responses shocked me.

My mom apologized.

My father, who had never acknowledged how he didn’t stop the abuse or protect me, also apologized.

I said I wanted space. They respected my wishes, and we completely stopped interacting for the better part of last year until I was ready.

East Asian immigrant parents don’t have a stellar reputation for respecting their children’s boundaries.

Mine learned to. It marked the beginning of a true reconciliation—built on openness and honesty.

No more silence.

Ten months ago, I believed our relationship destroyed. And I didn’t care. Their reactions made me reconsider, because being in relationships with messy people, especially when it’s family, is difficult, grinding work. What matters to me is a willingness to compromise and change.

Five months ago, we started talking again. Cautious as I am, I’ve nevertheless seen a change come over my mom that I think, this time, is lasting. Where before she was quick to deny her part in my childhood trauma and its effects on my present functioning, she is now taking the time to listen and consider what I say.

After I wrote the first version of this very essay, I showed the entire draft to her, certain she would again put up her defenses and demand I not send it out. Instead, she said, “I’m sorry this was your experience.”

These instances are but a few small moments that are slowly helping us rebuild trust in each other.

Ten years ago, I was not ready to have the conversation my mother wanted to have, nor do I believe she was truly in a place she could receive it. Sometimes, healing never comes. Some mothers never apologize.

But sometimes healing begins after thirty years.

Sometimes, a mother says, “I’m sorry.”

In my upcoming book, I write about a mother's love overcoming barriers. Sign up here to be notified when it launches.

About Me: Tiffany Chu is a Taiwanese American writer based in San Diego. Her essays and short stories have been published by San Diego Writers, Inc., Chicago Story Press, and Renewal Missions. She writes about evergreen themes of grief, belonging, and what it means to be human. She's been writing this publication, The Untangling, since 2023. Order my books here or here.