My daughter calls me on my birthday. On Mother’s Day. At Christmas. Sometimes Easter, if she remembers. The calls are warm enough—she asks how I’m doing, I ask about her job, her apartment, the guy she’s been seeing for almost a year now. We talk for twenty minutes or half an hour, and then she has to go. And that’s it until the next occasion comes around.
For a long time, I told myself this was just how young adults are now. That her generation communicates differently. That it didn’t mean anything about how she felt about me. I still believe some of that. But somewhere in my late sixties, sitting with a little more time and a little less distraction, I started asking a different question. Not why doesn’t she call more—but why doesn’t she want to.
That question led me somewhere uncomfortable. It led me back to what our relationship was like when she was growing up. The ways I was present and the ways I wasn’t. The things I communicated—without meaning to, without realizing I was communicating anything—about what kind of relationship we were going to have once she left.
I’m not describing a bad mother. I don’t think I was a bad mother. I’m describing a mother who was doing the best she could and also, in ways I’m still working out, shaped the distance I’m now sitting with. Those two things can both be true. And I think they are.
It took me longer than it should have to get here, and I’m still working some of it out, but here’s what I’ve come to understand.
I showed love through doing rather than being
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I was always doing something for her. Driving, cooking, fixing things, advocating. Showing up in all the ways that could be measured. What I was less good at was just being with her—sitting in her room while she talked, staying in a hard conversation rather than trying to resolve it, letting her be upset without immediately trying to make it better. I thought love was shown through action. But the kind of closeness that makes someone want to call on a random Tuesday isn’t built from doing—it’s built from presence. And I’m not sure I knew the difference when it mattered.
I made it easier for her to avoid me than engage with me
When she was a teenager, I had opinions. Strong ones, delivered with a certainty that didn’t leave much room for her to disagree without a fight. I thought I was being clear. I thought I was being a good parent. What I was actually doing, some of the time, was making it easier for her to say what I wanted to hear than to tell me what she was actually thinking.
And over time, that pattern becomes the relationship. She learned to show me the version of herself I’d receive well and keep the rest somewhere else. I taught her that, without knowing I was teaching it. The calls I get now are warm, careful, curated. Which is probably what I trained her to give me.
I never really asked what she needed
Joshua Coleman, Ph.D., writes that adult children often have a very different perspective on what they needed or wanted from their parents—and that the more a parent can take responsibility with empathy rather than defensiveness, the better the chances for genuine reconnection.
I’ve been thinking about what she needed that I didn’t always give.
Not the practical things—I gave those. The feeling of being understood. Of having a parent who could hold her experience without needing to correct it or explain why she was wrong. I was too focused on what I thought she needed to ask what she actually needed. And those weren’t always the same thing.
I needed her closeness more than I admitted
Tina Gilbertson, LPC, writes that adult children feel safer being close to a parent when they don’t sense that the parent needs them to fill something up inside—that children can feel that need even when it’s never spoken, and it can make closeness feel like a burden rather than something freely chosen.
I wanted us to be close. I wanted it very much.
And I think she could feel how much I wanted it, which made the whole thing complicated. When closeness is something a parent needs rather than something offered freely, the child often pulls back—not to hurt the parent, but because being close feels like a responsibility they didn’t sign up for. I think I may have made closeness feel like that, without realizing it.
I made her growth about what it cost me
When she left for college, when she moved far away, when her life became increasingly separate from mine—I experienced all of that as loss. And I didn’t hide it well. She knew that her independence hurt me, which made her feel guilty for becoming the person she was supposed to become. Guilt is not a feeling that makes people want to call more. It makes them call on the appropriate occasions—enough to honor the relationship—and then stay away from the charge that comes with more contact. I wonder sometimes how many of her holiday calls have been about managing that guilt rather than genuinely wanting to talk.
I only showed up for the big things
The holiday calls have an agenda. A purpose. There’s something to mark, which gives the call a structure and a reason. What ordinary calls require is just wanting to be in each other’s lives—the kind of wanting that has to be cultivated over years of showing someone that their ordinary life is interesting to you.
I’m not sure I communicated that enough. I asked about the big things—the job, the relationship, the major decisions. I’m not sure I made clear that I was also interested in the small things. What she cooked last night. The podcast she’d been listening to. The small irritation she had at work that wouldn’t matter in a week. The kind of stuff you share with people you actually talk to.
I gave her the message that emotions were something to manage, not share
When things were hard in our house, I handled it. I didn’t fall apart in front of her, which I thought was protecting her. What it may have also communicated was that feelings were private, that you dealt with them alone, and that showing need was something to be avoided. She learned from me what emotional life was supposed to look like. And what she saw was competent, contained, functional. Which is probably what she became. And a person who learned that emotions are private is probably not going to call her mother just to say she’s been thinking about her. That’s not a character flaw. It’s what I modeled.
I confused our phone calls for us being close
For years, I focused on the calls—how often, how long, what we talked about. I treated the calls as the relationship. What I’ve come to understand is that the calls are evidence of a relationship, not the thing itself. The thing itself is built from thousands of smaller moments where one person shows the other that they’re genuinely interested. If those moments are missing, or were replaced by something more transactional, the calls will reflect that. They’ll be dutiful rather than desired. Which is, I think, what I have. And knowing that is uncomfortable. But it’s also the first honest thing I’ve let myself say about it.
I still have time to do some of this differently
She’s in her thirties. I’m in my late sixties. There’s time, if I use it right.
I’ve been trying to figure out what using it right looks like—which mostly seems to mean asking more questions, showing more genuine interest in her life rather than reporting on mine.
It’s slow. I’ve had a lifetime of patterns, and she’s had a lifetime of responding to them. But there have been moments in the last year or two where something different happened—where the call went longer than it needed to, where she told me something she hadn’t needed to tell me. Small things. But they felt different. Like something shifting, slightly, in the right direction.
I’m not here to assign blame
The point of all this isn’t that I failed or that she’s been wronged or that anyone is responsible for the particular shape of our relationship in a simple or accusatory way. The point is that relationships are built, and I built this one, and I’m interested now in understanding what I built and whether I can build something better from here.
That requires looking honestly at what I contributed. Not as self-punishment but as information. If I know what I did—even the things I did with love, even the things I thought were right—then I have somewhere to start. Somewhere to work from. That’s all I’m trying to do.
Editor’s Note: This piece is part of our “As Told to Bolde” series where we share personal stories from individuals we have interviewed or surveyed. For more information on how we create content, please review our Editorial Policy.
