7 | When Love Isn't Enough to Change Someone: The Hard Truth About My Mom

Moving home 10 years ago was not an easy decision to make. No one actually wants to move home with their parents. OK, well, maybe some do. But I was not one of those people. I wrestled with the idea of moving home, but came to see it as an opportunity to rebuild and discover a new relationship with my mom.

What I actually came to discover is that you can’t change anyone. You can’t truly influence someone if they don’t want to be influenced. My desire to have an open healthy relationship with my mom is limited by her ability to have an open healthy relationship with herself.

It took me many years and thousands of dollars with a life coach to really ground myself emotionally when it came to my relationship with my mom. 

This episode was hard to write because there’s so many layers to my relationship with her. So many years navigating our strenuous relationship. I didn’t know how to begin to describe it. As I listen to my very own episode back, I believe I did a really great job of describing the kind of mental and emotional space I was moving back to.

Your environment really does play a factor in your life, and you can only influence your environment to a certain degree. 

My relationship with her also set the foundation for what this podcast stands for. That Permission to Rise is more than just a catchy phrase, but rather a full-blown promise to myself and a reminder that I am allowed to be everything that I am! 

🎧 Subscribe, follow, and share Permission to Rise with a woman who’s ready to rise into her next chapter.

Transcript

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Hey, it's Chelsea, and welcome to Permission to Rise, a podcast for women ready to find their voice, embrace healing, and rise into their fullest potential. If you're ready to stop shrinking and start showing up for your life, this podcast is your permission to rise. If you've been following along from the start, today's episode is going to be a continuation of last week's storytelling. I highly recommend going back and listening to season one episodes in order. I didn't mark this podcast as serial because eventually it won't be quite a timeline of events and you won't really have to listen to it in order. So let's get started. I moved home in 2016. Like I said in the last podcast, I ran out of roommates. I remember telling my mom that if I couldn't find a place, I was moving home. Her response was a big fat whoppin' no. I don't even think she could fathom the idea because people in her generation tend to think that once you leave, you leave. The reality of the housing crisis and financial situation in today's world is much different. Trying to tell a boomer that you can't necessarily go buy a house and support yourself on one single income, even with a college education, challenges every belief system they've ever had. And when you challenge people who have a very rigid mindset, they push back with everything they have. There's no way you're right, you have to be wrong. The relationship between my mom and I has always been a little rocky. I'd like to say that we're two very different people, and that makes it challenging to communicate well, live together, or even enjoy each other's company. While we are different, I feel like the disconnect in this relationship goes a little deeper than that. There's so much that I have to say about our relationship that I really don't know where to begin with it. But I feel like this is as good a place to start. I thought moving home would be so different. I was actually looking forward to it in a lot of ways. I was living in Mankato, which was always filled with college students and chaos. And while I liked being close to everything, having the conveniences of fast food or being able to just leave my apartment and skip across town to grab something from Target whenever I needed it, I was ready to be back in a small town. I wanted to get back to my late-night walks, or even just be able to walk outside and feel a bit safer. When I moved home, I dreamed of this scenario that my mom and I could use the space to really work together and learn from each other. That we could spend time together as two single adult gals and build a relationship like the kind that I desired. I kept thinking, this is such a great opportunity for us to spend time together. Maybe I can show her some of the things that I've learned living with other people and living on my own and going to school. Maybe she'll understand me better. Let me tell you, you can lead people to water all day long, but you cannot make them drink. This may be a deep dive on another episode, but I came across a book in 2025 after listening to one of Mel Robin's podcasts. She was talking with a psychologist about children of emotionally immature parents. I bought the psychologist's book because I was very curious to deep dive this concept. I'm always seeking to understand why people do what they do, especially when it comes to the behavior patterns of my mom. I could never find the words to really truly describe her behavior patterns. My friend and I spent years trying to sort out why she behaved the way that she did, to maybe put a definition to it, but nothing seemed quite right. This book broke down emotionally immature patterns in such an organized fashion that it all started to click. There were so many moments reading this book where my mind was blown. It was like my entire life was being described and laid out to me in a way that felt like I could finally describe to other people what it was like. This is honestly the hardest part. Coming up with words to talk about my relationship with my mom and what I've discovered over the last few years. I don't want this podcast to be something that I use to shit all over my mom. I don't want to stand here and tell you every horrible thing I think about her or about having lived with her. I know it's gonna sound like I have nothing but anger and hatred toward her, and that's not my intention. But I think there is something to understand when it comes to the greater depth of behavioral patterns that are really truly unhealthy and unsafe. Because what appears to be normal on the outside goes much deeper in reality. It goes beyond the normal scope of behavior. It's normal for parents to yell and get upset and be frustrated with their children. It's normal for parents to ask their children to take on responsibilities within the home, to learn independence and help out around the house, especially when you have a single parent household. But it's when that behavior is expected and demanded in replacement of a child's own needs that it changes the dynamic. It's when the child is supposed to put the needs of the adult before their own needs that it becomes a problem. For example, when I was in junior high and even in high school, I was expected to come home from school and start supper. I was also taking piano lessons at the time, so I would actually run home and sit at the piano before mom got home because I knew that the second she walked through the door, she would demand that I stop. She didn't want noise, she had a headache, she was gonna turn on the TV, she was gonna listen to music. I needed to start supper. There was always a reason for me to not be at my piano. So I would run home and play it as if I was doing something naughty. The second I heard the garage door shut, I would slam the cover down and pretend like I'd been making supper the whole time. But the expectation is that I would come home and start supper. And when she came home, it was asked that I finish supper and then set the table and pour her a glass of milk. God forbid, you forget the milk. Make sure there are napkins on the table, and you can't sit down to eat until mom sits down to eat. But mom can sit down and eat while you run around and do everything else that she needs you to do because she's allowed to eat before you. And when dinner is done, the expectation is that you stick around to help with the dishes, and then she needs you to do something else, and then she needs you to do something else. Catering to her needs over and over again while your homework goes unfinished, while your ability to rest after school and unwind is completely second to her ability to do the same. And I'm not saying that my mom didn't need to unwind. I understand it fully as an adult now that there is this desire to just get home and take a breath, but that was her responsibility. It should never have been my responsibility to do the things that she needed to do in place of my own needs so she could breathe. At least not to the extent that this happened. Because it wasn't just once or twice. This was multiple times a week. While I think she was trying to teach me really good values and how to take care of myself and be independent, she also taught me how to put everyone else before myself. And that became a repeating pattern in so many areas of my life. That's where the guilt digs in its heels. That's where I think you learn to feel shame and guilt for having needs or allowing yourself to do for you before others. When I went off to college, my schedule changed every semester. There were new classes, a new work schedule, a new credit load to contend with. My social circle also came into play. And every year I lived with someone new. Constant change. I didn't always mind this. It felt like all the times when I really needed a change in my life and I would go rearrange my room as a kid, that was my favorite thing to do. So I enjoyed the refresh every semester. Change is something that my mother has a really hard time with. I know she's not alone in that, but for her, in my opinion, change has always built a level of anxiety that I don't think she has ever truly been able to manage on her own. And when that anxiety builds, she tends to project. She needs a place to put that nervous energy so that it doesn't weigh as heavy. I think we can all relate to this on some level, that sometimes when we're nervous or stressed or anxious, we tend to blow up at people or project or lay it down a little too hard on the table. It's easy to let ourselves be controlled by our emotions in those intense feelings of fear, anxiety, anger, etc. I moved home in the beginning of April 2016 because I actually found a really good job. In fact, my mom is the one who found me the job through a friend of hers. Her friend helped me fill up the intensive application for this position, and it got me the job. I was so very grateful to find something stable that paid well, especially moving home to a smaller community with less resources and less opportunity. It was mass chaos because my brother was also living at home, so I actually slept on the couch for two and a half months and left most of my stuff in my apartment with my roommate, including my cat. My lease wasn't up until July. My brother wasn't moving out until mid-June. He also had his dog in the house. She was an energetic lab. And I think by the time he moved out and I fully moved in, we had both the dog and the cat in the same space for a couple of weeks. It was a very emotionally charged environment. However, my brother and I both understood that all of it is temporary. So we knew that no matter what, everything was going to change, and it was all going to work itself out because we knew how to work through chaos and change. We came up with a system that worked for us and we followed it. My mom, on the other hand, was not having a very good time. In fact, I think about a month into me moving home, she actually got laid off from her job, so that created another level of tension and stress to the environment. This is honestly barely grazing the surface of everything that I'm going to share, but I think it's a pretty decent representation of the kind of energy that I came home to. And if I'm being honest, it's always been like this. I thought that by moving home I could change it, that I could influence the energy and the environment. It was a huge revelation to figure out that you really can only influence someone as far as they're willing to be influenced. You really truly cannot change someone if they don't want to be changed. There's always a lot of gaslighting going on as well. I talk about some of these things that happened in the past because they're really good stories and examples that I recall vividly, and having conversations about this with my mom has always triggered her. It's always sparked a level of gaslighting because, according to her, I'm remembering it wrong. It was never like that. It's not that bad. You act like I was the worst mother in the world. Those are all deflecting statements that take the pressure off of her and then project it back at me. That's the problem that I have. Essentially, in her mind, based on these statements, I'm not allowed to have feelings. I'm not allowed to feel a certain way. I'm being told how to feel about it. I'm being told how it really was. So by that statement, my thoughts and feelings are completely invalidated. This is how our relationship has been much of my life. I've processed a lot of these stories that I'm going to tell you. I've found forgiveness for her. I have found the ability to walk away from it. However, the behavior pattern is exactly the same today. Our lives are vastly different, the scenarios are vastly different, but the energy and the behavior pattern is exactly the same. These behavior patterns continue to appear throughout the entire time that I lived with her. And in fact, the last year and a half of me living in that house was 10,000 times worse than I ever thought it would get. The good news is that I'm out, never going back. I've been planning this podcast for an entire year now. I came up with the name while I was going through Tony Robbins' UPW event, his Unleashed the Power Within event. But I knew that I wasn't going to be able to start it in her home. I'll be honest, I used ChatGPT to help me generate a description for this podcast. I wanted everything to sound very well-rounded and put together. I've not actually used AI for a lot of things. I'm probably being stubborn and not wanting to use it because it feels like cheating. And as I used it to create a pillar for this podcast called Authenticity, it feels weird to promote something that's not quite mine. Full disclosure, I did have to rearrange some words and letters because it didn't always make sense. But I was shocked that ChatGPT used a word that I had actually used on my website in my about me section after I rebranded. I never included it in the prompt, so when it showed up in the description, I was like, okay, we're on to something here. That word was unapologetically. That has been my mantra the last few years. To learn to be unapologetic about speaking my truth, about protecting my peace, about doing what is best for me. Building a podcast where I talk about things that may be uncomfortable for other people to listen to, especially my mom, if she finds this, feels like I'm breaking the rules. There's another story I'm going to tell you later in the podcast where I really did lose control of my life in a way. It's a story that I've maybe only told 10 people in my entire life, and ever since then, I've had this overwhelming feeling that I'm not allowed to do something or say something or be myself because my mom might not like it. I've come to understand that that's what abuse does when someone controls your life to a certain degree, or when they exercise a level of control over you like she did. You feel obligated toward this person. And that's a very, very unsafe place to be mentally and emotionally. It's almost cult-like behavior. So as I use the description of this podcast and I talk about the title permission to rise, it goes deeper than just giving you a fun tagline or a title that's catchy and empowering and motivating. This is literally an era of my life where I am truly, unapologetically, giving myself permission in a way that I never have before. In a way that feels so right and so good and so natural and so calm to do. I'm absolutely loving this podcast, and I've just barely started. I sit in front of this mic and it gives me life. So if you've listened this far, thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for listening. This episode is brought to you by The Rise Boutique, an online women's clothing boutique featuring anchored arrows leggings, snarky coffee cups, graphic teas, and more. Find it all at theriseboutique.com and use code podcast for 15% off your purchase.