Coming to terms with my mother’s choices, as I enter my 30s

r/

I’ve carried quiet resentment toward my mother for years—mainly because she married my father, a man who abandoned us when I was little. A part of me used to think, How could she choose him?

But now, in my 30s, I’m starting to see her not just as “Mom” but as a woman who lived a first life—a woman who made choices with the knowledge, resources, and emotional tools she had at the time. That realization doesn’t erase all the hurt, but it brings a strange, soft kind of understanding. 🥹

It’s been emotional, watching myself shift from blame to curiosity, from anger to empathy. I’m still working through it, but I think this is part of the peak female experience too: recognizing your mother’s humanity, maybe for the first time.

Have any of you gone through this kind of emotional unlearning about your mother? How did you come to peace with it—or are you still on the way there?