The Version of My Mom I Always Wanted And Why It Didn’t Last

In this episode, Martina shares a deeply personal story about her mom’s visit—and the unexpected emotional aftermath that followed. 

What felt like healing at first turned into a powerful realization about triggers, inner child needs, and how much our environment shapes the way we experience relationships. 

This is an honest look at what it means to feel something you’ve been craving your whole life… and what happens when it’s suddenly gone.

• Why feeling better doesn’t always mean it’s healed
• The difference between change and no triggers
• What it felt like to finally experience ease with her mom
• How this unlocked a deeper inner child realization

A raw, grounded reflection on what healing really is—and what it isn’t.

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Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice.

Transcript

When Healing Feels Temporary

Martina 0:00

Have you ever felt like something finally healed, only to realize later maybe it didn't quite yet? Like you experience this ease, this softness, this connection you've craving your whole life for somebody. And for a moment you think, wow, this is it. But then it's gone. And you're left wondering, well, was that real change or was nothing just getting triggered? In today's episode, I am sharing a very personal story about my mom, about a visit that felt surprisingly easy, like almost healing, and the emotional drop that I experienced right after. Because what I realized shifted the way I think about healing, about relationships, and what we actually mean when we say, Oh, I've worked through this. And trust me, it's not as simple as our brain likes us to think it is. So without further ado, let's dive right into. I realized I'm owing you another vulnerable topic, or a topic that is super super interesting that I thought sharing with you might help you, or maybe you can relate to this story, or maybe it's just very interesting to listen to this. So I am talking about the relationship I have with my mom and how the visit that she paid me back in January changed a lot for me, and at the same time, also not really, but it was such an interesting experience, and I thought reflecting on it, there is gold in it. So let's go back in January. It's been a couple of weeks that January has ended, but in the end of the day, let's just jump and start with her visit. So my husband and I in December went back to Europe as we usually do, and spent uh two weeks with our families, and then we took my mom with us to Miami, and it's her second time in the US, the last time she was in the US '82. So obviously, no, I'm lying. She was back in no, wait, wait, wait. Sorry, sorry, it was her third time. Last year she came with my sister to Miami, but we haven't been living in Miami yet. We were still in in California and we met all here for vacation. So sorry, I I just completely missed this part. But anyway, my my mom came with us to to Miami in January half a year ago. I've asked her, hey, don't you want to just spend January with with us here? It's warm, it's super sunny, and you know, January back home in Europe is grey. There's usually not the most sun out there, and it's also cold, and it's more of a dispressing month because all those festivities, all these family gatherings, and this kind of celebratory mood, festive mood around Christmas and New Year's, you know, is weaning off, and we all usually don't eat the healthiest, and obviously back to January, and you know, then this combined with the weather, it just feels a month that can be challenging. Not for everyone, but for some. And I remember back when I was still living in in areas where we had the seasons. January was also particularly challenging in a way. So she came with us and she stayed almost for four weeks with me and my husband in our apartment. So we have a two-bedroom apartment, she had her own room, her own bathroom, so we have plenty of space, but I was uh kinda a little bit nervous because I have never had my mom over for four weeks in a place where we lived in the US. So I had absolutely no data, no experience how that would go. And while my mom is generally speaking, uncomplicated, she's easygoing in a way. My mom and I share a past that has been strained, or that has been strained, that was strained, that was challenging, difficult, and it was this typical mother-daughter relationship where lots of pain has been generated, and I as a child, while I had everything objectively speaking, I didn't have the mom that I wished I had. And my mom, you know, she had four kids, she had a big house to take care of. So obviously, growing older and also talking to my dad a lot about what happened in their marriage and how everything was, it gave me so much context, and then with age and experience, of course, you understand things. And I made peace with my mom and what I didn't get from her also early in my 20s because I always I'm always a very forgiving person, and I especially when it comes to loved ones, because you know, harboring resentment just poisons you and makes your life so much harder. And I decided back in my 20s, when the relationship was still up and down and strained, I just made peace with it. And you know, I mean my childhood, again, while I had everything and we never lacked money, and from that lens we were or I was brought up in a privileged way. I had a mom that was emotionally absent, and she had challenges, and she wasn't the happiest, maybe let's put it this way, and she sacrificed everything for the family. And of course, that doesn't do you good when you also have your own needs and dreams that she could not realize. And my mom was a housewife, and we all know that this is a role that does not get enough attention and enough, you know, kind of merits or credits because oh, it's just a housewife, right? It's just home, but no one saw the big work behind. And I mean, I always had a warm meal when I came home, and I mean, come on, this is this is nowadays when I look back, it's like wow, I had a lot, but then the emotional warmth was missing, and you know, I think you can compensate not having a warm meal, maybe not something freshly cooked with when you when you get love and emotional regulation. I think you can compensate a lot. Not to say that this is replaceable, both things are very important, but yeah, anyway, I just you know, now in hindsight I do understand a lot of things, but then when you are in when you are young and you're not getting certain things, uh, it it hurts, it it causes smaller traumas here and there. And I only noticed that I that things are missing, or I wish I would have a different mom. I had this thought very often in my childhood and teenager years. When you are with your friend's parents or friends' moms, and you see there are different moms, right? Moms that are way more easy-going and giving love openly, hugging, and all those things, and I was like, I want that too. But yeah, and then of course, there were there was a mess in the marriage of with between my parents, and there's there's lots that I don't wanna go into because this, you know, I'm not someone who wants to publish other people's past challenges publicly. I mean, my parents, and I've masked them to if I can speak about this, and I would never do, and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want that. So but there were ins incidences that caused significant trauma and hardships that again out of respect, don't want to dig into, but I've been between my parents when the marriage was done, you know. So coming between two adults and being used from on both ends to kind of, you know, as they wish, and and making that to their advantage, but also then to my advantage was hard. So yeah, fast forward to today. I mean, you know, in my 20s and 30s, the relationship with my mom, I mean, the older I got, the better kind of it got, but I don't know, mom, daughter relationships I feel like are never that easy, and I feel like a lot is placed on daughters, or a lot of things is projected on daughters, and not to say that obviously in every mother-daughter relationships I have examples from friends where it's actually amazing and cool, and you know, they are like best friends, and I mean not best friends with my mom at all. But I do call my mom regularly, once a week, she calls me, so we do speak about things, you know, more on the superficial end, but still like we we have we talk, and I the older I got, the more I care and cared about my parents and their well-being. So I thought, you know, my mom loves the sun, she loves the beach. So I thought, like, I mean, I have the opportunity to invite her, and my husband was is fortunately such a great person to be cool with having his mother-in-law over for a month. I mean, you know, don't forget this is it's not a big house, and I mean, you know, we also don't have kids where it, you know, it makes sense then for her also to help us with the kids. So that would have been like inviting her was purely for her. And of course, in a way for us too, but you know, it was more for her, obviously. And you know, having less time for the two of us, for me and my husband, but you know, we thought it's a cool idea, it's a cool, you know, we we could try it out. And we traveled then also to Arizona, we went to the Grand Canyon, Sedona with her, so we did a lot of good things as well. In but we just not stayed home in in Miami Beach all the time. So we had a great time, and I was really surprised in a very positive way how easy it was to have my mom over. There were not many moments where I was like, oh, okay, I would like to have my own like peace. Not at all. My mom is super easy going, I was working. She went to the pool, to the beach alone. We spent time together, walking the dogs, we traveled, all this stuff. So, and at some point it was time for her to go home. And I was naturally very sad. I'm always sad if family is leaving or if someone is leaving me to go back home, and especially if the time was like well spent, and you know, we cooked together, I made her breakfast, we went shopping, grocery shopping together, we went shopping together, so we did a lot of things, so I was like hardly alone, and I really I enjoyed it. You know, I'm a person who needs her time alone. I love when I have downtime to spend it in a way for me and not having to take care of another person, and it was super easy to be with her and was really, really great. So I truly enjoyed. But then okay, I had to wave her goodbye, and I was so sad. I was so sad. So when she left, I was I felt such a heaviness. I grieved, like I really grieved the moments I spent with her because four weeks doesn't sound that long, but I mean every single day you start to get a routine together, you know, walking the dogs together in the morning, going grocery shopping together, choosing our meals together, cooking together. Sometimes she cooked, sometimes I cooked, and you know, just sitting on the balcony or when go to the beach together. And like when she left and I walked my dogs, I I was so sad because every corner, every route I took with my dogs to walk kind of reminded me me of her. And like I saw her basically on every corner, and I don't know, it was so hard. I told my husband, hey, this is difficult to cope for me. And he said, like, oh, don't worry, we can go back as soon as possible, like maybe in May or April. And I said, like, well, yes, I mean, I it's not really important to me. So I I didn't feel the need now to fly to take a plane and go back to my mom. So while I appreciated that suggestion, I was like, yeah, but that doesn't really, that's not really it. I don't really need to see her right away, but I miss her so much. And I mean, I was functional, I could work, I could do my stuff, I went back to my routines, and then at some point enjoyed my alone time, but still something felt off underneath, and I really, really felt like, what is it? And it really caught me off guard, and like I was like so I was longing for my mom like a child. Like, I don't know if you have been going on vacations, like when you had off from school and you went to visit someone, maybe a cousin, an aunt, or you went on a field trip with your school, and you're younger, obviously, and you start to miss your mom. I had that. I literally missed my mom like a child. And I called her very often and just needed to hear her, and you know, and and and I don't know, it was like, oh, you know. And then I was like, how come that I'm missing her like a child? It wasn't as you know, I just waved my sister goodbyes two weeks ago and her family, and I was sad, but I was sad for a day, and then I was like, okay, well, that's what it is, so you know, and I was over the grief. It took me a little, maybe a day or two, but with my mom, the second week I was still kind of like out of breath because I was so grieving and sad. So yeah, so uh yeah. Then I asked myself, what is that? Like why why am I feeling this way? And then I, you know, upon reflection and really sitting with the pain, I realized, well, it's kind of the first time that who I was and who I am and everything I have in my life is appreciated, liked, praised, and enjoyed by my mom. There was no criticism, there was no you could do better, there was no comparison to somebody else, and for all my life, nothing I did or nothing or no matter who I was, good or maybe naughty, was never enough. It was never appreciated. And I mean, you know, when I look back on my life, I never gave my parents too much of a headache. Of course, I was a teenager, I had my mischievous times, I maybe had to worry once or twice. But like, what is this? Like there was nothing. And my mom, what I realized was in his four weeks, she enjoyed not only my company, not only my husband's company, but everything I've built, including who I was. And I was the one sometimes a little bit more bossy with my mom, or maybe impatient with my mom, but little. And we had a really good like time together, and I caught my mom on pictures like where she was smiling, which she hardly does. When you see pictures of my mom, she hardly smiles, she's always like very tense in a way. And I felt like here in Miami, she was free, she was happy, she was light. So she uh was really a different person, and uh she enjoyed because everything that came from me was uh things that she appreciated. And there was ease, there was her presence, more presence there, and there was enjoyment without getting criticized or second-guessed, and we felt I felt safe with her, and there was good co-regulation between the two of us. So it's like I mean, still my mom is still the same person, but it was a complete different experience, and that was the shift. She came into my environment, and not me in hers, because obviously my mom has still the big house that I grew up in, and in my twenties and thirties, I came back to my mom's house a lot, sometimes for weeks, sometimes just for a weekend. But I always come came back because it's a house with a big garden, with a forest in the back of the house, and it was relaxing, and also, you know, whenever I had a challenging time, the best time and the most safety I felt back home. But at the same time, the relationship with my mom wasn't always that good. Even in my 30s, we had challenges with each other, and there was criticism, and you know, I don't know, it and you know, and then I was like, ooh, you know, amazing. And then I felt my inner child finally got in the time that she was in Miami that what she what my inner child would have needed already earlier, and now I I got it with being 40, can you imagine? And that felt so good, and so it's it was addictive. And then when she left, I obviously someone took it away from me. And I mean, of course, no one took it away from me, but it felt like someone took it away, and I felt into this whole yeah, into this hole. And I I mean my husband was nothing really has changed, but you know, when your inner child starts to get what it was craving for 40 years, wow, you just don't want anyone to take this away, but then life goes on, you know. I mean, obviously I can't have my mom living here, and it would not be feasible on many, many different levels, and I don't think it would even be good to do that. But you know, old patterns started to disappear fast, and there was no trigger. I never was triggered by her, she wasn't triggered by me, so I've I felt like that was healing. And I thought, wow, we healed our relationship, but in the end of the day, also looking at it more critically or more in-depth, it's it was just the absence of activation. There were just no triggers. She came into my place, so of course she, you know, and there was everything. I mean, objectively speaking, I made it in my mom's eyes. You know, I have a husband who I'm with for 11 years, we have a loving relationship, I have a good job, he has a good job. We live in Miami, we live in the US, we we build the life from scratch. It's good, you know, and I can't remember my mom having to worry about me a lot in the past 25 years because I have had everything together. I mean, I had breakups, I moved in and out apartments, but I mean there was nothing serious. There was no fortunately no sickness or illnesses or anything that my mom seriously had to worry about me. So, and then what felt like healing was actually absence of activation. And while it felt amazing for my inner child, and still is and there is healing, but that's not mean that my mother wound is fully healed, because you know our brain goes from oh okay, that's now great, so uh this is healed, but no, not really. So when I look back at those weeks with my mom in Miami, I can't deny something really Real for me. I mean, it felt good, it felt easy, it felt light or lighter than anything I had experienced with her before. And because of that, my first interpretation was, wow, something must have shifted between us, and that was made me really happy. But the more I sat with it afterwards, the more I realized nothing actually changed in the relationship itself. What changed was the context we were in. There was no shared history being replayed in the Miami apartment or in the US. There is not the old parent house. There are different roles also, because it's a difference between me spending time with my mom in the house I grew up with, where we have shared history together, where when I go back to Austria, I have a certain role. Then how it is when she is in Miami in my new place that she has never been to or in, where I am, let's say, the boss, and where I well, she has to rely on me because she doesn't know anyone in Miami. She doesn't know anything about Miami or you know how certain things work here. And there are obviously no automatic emotional scripts in Miami. It was just a new space. No, there was a new rhythm, new version of us together. And in that space, something important happened in me. I I wasn't anticipating criticism. I wasn't bracing myself for any of those things that trigger me or trigger her. I didn't have to adjust before I even spoke. So naturally I started to feel something I didn't grow up with in that dynamic, and that was ease. Ease being together. And I think this is where it gets tricky, emotionally speaking, because ease can feel like healing, especially if your system is used to tension, emotional distance, or sudden subtle criticism here and there. So when that the tension suddenly disappears, even if just temporarily, which you often don't know, it's just a temporarily thing, your brain wants to make a meaning out of it. At least my my brain goes like this. And it wants to say, wow, this is it, this is a new shift, this is what changed. But what I came to learn is that sometimes nothing is resolved. Sometimes fixed. Sometimes nothing is even different between two people. It is just that the activation patterns are offline. And just because they're offline doesn't mean they aren't there. And I noticed that clearly when she left, because the moment she was gone, I didn't just miss her. I started to miss how I felt in that version of reality, that version where I wasn't managing anything internally, where I wasn't interpreting or preparing or adjusting. I was just there. I was just me, me in my full version. And that contrast was intense. And that's not because I lost something permanently, but because I had briefly experienced something my system recognized as rare. Something, you know, that and something that's came up a little deeper in me, within me, which is my inner child. And that was not a dramatic breakthrough way. It was more like a quiet recognition that this is this is what I had with my mom, that ease, that you know, teamwork. We worked so well as a team that this is what I was actually longing for. And I also know my mom appreciated everything I did for her, the time we spent with her, we took her to places, she was really appreciative, she didn't take anything for granted. And she's not a different mother, and our past is not rewritten at all. But moments of connections where I didn't have to earn ease, that was what so what that was what was so precious for me. Where I could just exist and be received without us getting each on each other's nerves. And I think that's what made this experience so emotionally confusing, because it wasn't painful in a moment, it only became emotional afterwards when I realized, oh, I I just experienced something I didn't have growing up, something I longed and craved and wished I always had. And that's where I had to slow myself down because it would be very easy to turn this into another healing story and then go on my podcast and say, Oh, I healed my mother wound, and the relationship with my mom is so different, and this has changed for good. That would not be fully true, and this would be such a clean thing that I think we heard online so many times of like, if you want to have your XYC wound or XYZ trauma be healed, take step one, two, three, or let me tell you how I healed XYC so that you can do the same. This is such a bullshit. Not to say that you cannot heal from something, but how do you know that this trigger and this activation will never show up? Patterns can dissolve more, or sometimes temporarily, because a different environment creates a different version of you. And you know, you can. I think Ram Das said that so perfectly. Ram Das was a spiritual teacher in the 60s, 70s, I think, and 80s, and he said it so perfectly. He said, if you think you're so enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents. Hunt was so cool because that is so true. You can like live abroad or somewhere else, maybe 50 kilometers away from your parents, and and heal and feel like you enlightened yourself to the next level, and then you go back to your parents for a family gathering, and then you actually get triggered AF there. Because you know, the grand awakening, you know, isn't coming without these relationship triggers, and old habits often remain hidden in more isolated spaces or in different environments. So, yeah. And again, my nervous system just responded to that new version, and that's not because the past was erased, but because it wasn't being triggered in the moments I spent with my mom. And this is the part I really want to be honest about because I think a lot of us do this. We confuse absence of triggers with a big transformation, we confuse feeling good in a certain environment with permanent emotional resolution, but they are not the same thing. And I have a friend, she has a kind of newish relationship with a partner. She came out of an abusive relationship a couple of years ago, and now she has a new boyfriend, they don't live together, and the relationship is all ease and all comfort, and there are almost no triggers coming, and if there's something coming, they talk about it, and it's all like it sounds so good, and it's a good relationship for sure, objectively speaking, but there is no not much shared emotional experience yet, they haven't moved in together. So what I mean to say is the absence of triggers doesn't mean you transformed as a person, you transformed your past traumas or wounds, they are just not activated yet. And on the other hand, I don't want to dismiss what happened. I don't because it wasn't nothing either. It something meaningful did happen. I'm not just saying now logically, oh that didn't matter, these four weeks with her, and you know who everything is as it is. There uh there was something meaningful happening, and that was my inner child got a glimpse and a really real one. Something, even if it was temporarily, even if it was contextual. I don't think that that should be minimized because sometimes healing doesn't start as permanence, sometimes it starts as a contrast, or it starts as showing you there is a possibility that you lived for a certain amount of time and could be something for the future. You experience something different enough that you start to question what you thought was your emotional baseline, right? And that's what I am left with now. Not a conclusion like, oh, it's all healed, but a more grounded awareness. There are states of being where I'm not in old patterns. There are versions of me that are softer, more open, less guarded, and those versions are not imaginary anymore. They are activated, they are not only a potential, they are part of my reality. But on the same time, I also know, you know, when I go back to Austria now in summer, you know, the relationship might be a bit better, but we still might have to face certain patterns and roles that f have frictions once once I'm back with my mom in her house. So yeah, so if I take one thing from this experience, it's this that healing is not always about fixing a relationship. Sometimes it's about recognizing what conditions allow a different version of you to exist, and then slowly learning how to access more of that version in your real life. And that doesn't need to be perfect, it doesn't need to be permanent, but consciously. And maybe that's the real takeaway from this whole story and this episode for you today. That not that I healed something with my mom, but that I got to feel something, something I didn't have words for before. And once you felt it, you can't you can't unfeel things anymore. Once you have tapped into a potential and seen different reality because of a different environment, you can't unsee this, you can unfeel it. And you definitely can go back to pretending you don't know it exists. So while I am the opinion that yes, we did heal past patterns and maybe past timelines, that doesn't mean I believe everything is healed and everything is rewritten, what happened in the past. That also means not everything stays now the same. I think we did change because I think my mom also felt that this was a great time and we might be able to replicate that again when she comes back to Miami. Maybe we can replicate that later. Once we I'm back in Austria, who knows? I don't know. But you know, I'm not attaching on like clinging on this idea or attaching myself to this needs to be now different. I'm just letting things go and slide and enjoy that. I had the chance to experience this, and that's that's everything, you know. Life is full of experiences and making new connections and experiencing or feeling a different version of us come online and older versions go offline, and sometimes it's a forth and back, and I think that is good. I think that works really well for me. So I hope this episode was of use. I hope it gives you insights. I'm curious to hear how your relationship is with your mom. I know some of you have very tight connections and you know lots of love in between mom and daughter, and while I have that too, it's still as it is, and I'm still very grateful for that, but of course, I also know some do not have a relationship at all with their mom, and unfortunately some of you don't have a mom anymore or never had one. So I also want to recognize this and hope that even though whatever scenario might you know be yours, that this was a useful episode to listen to. So again, I appreciate you. I am forever grateful that you are listening to to this episode, to this podcast. If you have anything you want to share with me, please feel free to do so. I'm always looking forward to hear your words, your feedback, your thoughts. And yeah, having that said, I wish you a lovely rest of your day, a lovely rest of the week, and I'll talk to you very soon!