When Mother’s Day Disappoints You: Expectations, Hurt Feelings & Emotional Adulthood

Mother’s Day can bring flowers, brunch, and sweet social media posts… but for many women, it also brings disappointment. 

Maybe you only got a text from your adult kids.
Maybe your husband didn’t plan anything.
Maybe you spent the weekend celebrating everyone else and ended the day feeling unseen, hurt, or resentful. 

In this episode, Lori talks honestly about the emotional expectations many women carry into Mother’s Day, birthdays, and family holidays — and what happens when reality doesn’t match the picture in our heads. 

This is not an episode about “never feeling disappointed.” It’s about learning how to recognize: 

•  unspoken expectations, 
•  the painful stories we tell ourselves, 
•  emotional martyrdom, 
•  and when disappointment is actually pointing to a real relationship issue that needs attention. 

Lori also shares a personal story about one of the biggest arguments in her marriage — and how disappointment eventually led to an important conversation and years of growth.
 
If you’ve ever ended a holiday feeling hurt, overlooked, emotionally exhausted, or unsure what to do with your disappointment, this episode will help you approach those feelings with more clarity, honesty, and emotional maturity.
 
In this episode: 

•  Why unspoken expectations create resentment 
•  The difference between disappointment and rejection 
•  How “people are going to people” 
•  When mindset work helps — and when a conversation is needed 
•  Why emotional adulthood matters in family relationships 
•  How to stop handing other people full responsibility for your happiness 

You are not wrong for wanting to feel loved and appreciated. But learning what to do with disappointment may change your relationships — and your peace — more than getting the perfect Mother’s Day ever could.
 

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And if you loved this episode, please rate the show and leave a review so others can find it, too.  

You can also follow me on my socials:

Instagram: @loribuckcoaching

Facebook: Lori Buck Coaching

Website: www.loribuckcoaching.com 

Email: lori@loribuckcoaching.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello, friend, and welcome back to Loving That Midlife. I'm Lori Buck, Master Certified Christian Life Coach, and I'm so glad you're here. I'm going to be honest, this episode is not the one I had planned to record this week. But I woke up on Monday morning and looked at social media, and then I remembered something I've noticed over the past several years. Something maybe I should have thought about last week, but it's this. Mother's Day is one of the most emotionally revealing days on the internet. So if you ended Mother's Day feeling disappointed, hurt, unseen, resentful, or maybe even a little embarrassed by how emotional you felt about the whole thing, you are not alone. And this episode is for you. Because every year, the Monday after Mother's Day, social media fills up with disappointed moms. On Monday, I saw a post about moms upset that their adult kids had only sent a text and hadn't called or sent a card. Moms hurt because they planned a huge college graduation party that lasted all weekend, but then nobody really acknowledged her on Mother's Day. I saw stepmoms feeling invisible, single moms feeling unappreciated, women angry at their husbands for not stepping in and organizing something. But underneath almost all of it, there was this feeling of I don't feel seen, or I don't feel appreciated. And I think what makes this complicated is that some of the disappointment that these moms are feeling feels warranted. Some women really are carrying the emotional weight of their families while receiving very little care in return. But I also think that Mother's Day and birthdays and certain holidays have a way of exposing something deeper. Maybe it's expectations we didn't realize we had, or stories we're telling ourselves, or the ways we hand other people responsibility for our own emotional well-being. So today I want to talk about it, about disappointment. And no, not how we can never need to feel it again, but what we do with it when it shows up. Because friends, disappointment will show up in your life. And if family relationships, unmet expectations, or emotional overwhelm in this season of life feel heavier than you expected, that's actually the exact kind of thing that coaching helps with. And if you're interested, I'll tell you a little bit more about how you can get coaching from me at the end of this episode. But first, I think one of the reasons these holidays create so much emotion is because most of us walk into them with expectations we've never fully said out loud. And sometimes maybe we haven't even admitted those to ourselves. We just kind of have a picture in our head or a feeling in our body of something we want to experience. Maybe the picture is the thoughtful phone call, or the flowers, the handwritten card, the husband organizing something special, the adult kids coming over willingly and acting happy to be there. Or maybe it's less about the specific thing and more about wanting to feel seen, wanted, important, appreciated. And honestly, none of that is wrong. I think it's very human to want acknowledgement from the people you've poured yourself into for years. But where we get ourselves into trouble is when those expectations stay completely unspoken while also becoming very emotionally loaded. Because the other people in the situation often have absolutely no idea that we have a script in our head for how they should perform. They're operating from their own script. Your adult son might think, I texted her first thing this morning. Of course she knows I love her. Meanwhile, mom is thinking, a text? Is that it? And now both people are confused. I think this happens a lot in midlife relationships in general. We start silently hoping people will anticipate our emotional needs without us having to say them out loud. And I think it's compounded by the fact that we've been thinking these same thoughts over and over and over again and not realizing we haven't necessarily vocalized them to our loved ones. And here's the thing: sometimes our loved ones do anticipate our needs. But a lot of times, they don't. And not necessarily because they don't love us, but because they're human, just like we are. And humans are inconsistent. They can be distracted, self-focused, especially younger adults who are building careers and marriages and raising little kids and trying to hold their own lives together. Again, this doesn't mean that your disappointment isn't real. It just means disappointment often grows in the space between what we hoped would happen and what we actually communicated. And I've said before on this podcast, but I really believe it. So let me repeat it. Unvoiced expectations are often just disappointments waiting to happen. Now, I want to be really careful here because I do not think that all disappointment is imagined. Sometimes people genuinely are thoughtless. Sometimes relationships really are strained. Sometimes you really are carrying more emotional weight in the family than everybody else is. But I also truly believe a lot of our suffering comes from the meaning we attach to what happened. Because an event will happen and then our brain automatically starts narrating to us what it means. So they only texted me because I must not be important to them. Or my husband didn't plan anything, becomes nobody ever takes care of me. Or my stepkids acknowledge their mom publicly and didn't mention me becomes I will never belong in this family. And those stories we tell ourselves hurt not just the event itself, but the interpretation of the event. And listen, sometimes there's a little truth mixed in there, right? I'm not denying that, but our brains are very quick to turn one disappointing moment into a sweeping statement about our worth, our relationships, or even our entire life. And that's where we have to slow down and ask, what else could be true here? Maybe your adult child really did think a text first thing in the morning was meaningful. Maybe your husband genuinely thought the graduation party counted as celebrating you too. Maybe your stepdaughter feels awkward and conflicted and emotionally torn, not malicious. And I think emotional adulthood is learning to pause before we immediately turn disappointment into rejection. Because those are not always the same thing. One thing I say to myself a lot is people are going to people. Or another way to put it is people are human. And honestly, I think holidays expose this reality more than almost anything else. Because we tend to build those up emotionally in our minds, right? Holidays are these emotionally loaded days. But then the actual human beings in our life show up. Humans who are distracted, humans who are immature sometimes, humans who are overwhelmed, humans who don't think emotionally the same way that we do, humans who may love us very much and still disappoint us. And I think a lot of moms especially fall into this trap of believing, well, if they really loved me, they would automatically know what would make me feel special. But that's usually not how people work. Some people are naturally thoughtful gift givers and some aren't. Some families are very expressive emotionally, and some aren't. Some adult children are still pretty self-absorbed, which honestly is not shocking if they're in their twenties. Again, understanding people doesn't mean you can't feel hurt, but it does help us to stop personalizing every disappointment as evidence that we are unloved, because those are not the same thing. And I think this is where we have to be careful as women in midlife, because disappointment can very quickly turn into martyrdom if we're not paying attention. And martyrdom often sounds like, after everything I've done. And listen, I get it, because mothers do a lot, right? Emotionally, mentally, physically. There are women listening who have spent decades remembering birthdays, planning holidays, buying gifts, scheduling appointments, organizing family life, carrying emotional labor that nobody even notices. So when Mother's Day comes and it feels underwhelming, it can tap into years of feeling unseen or years of frustration. But here's the problem with martyr energy: it punishes us because it keeps us emotionally stuck. Because now we're keeping score. And that means there are winners and losers. And if we're the only ones keeping score, we're probably going to be the loser. Because now we're waiting for other people to finally pay us back emotionally for everything we've poured out. And people almost never repay emotional debt in the exact way we hope they would. That doesn't mean your needs don't matter. It just means that other people are not very good long-term strategies for emotional fulfillment. And this is where I think emotional adulthood matters so much. Can I acknowledge disappointment without collapsing into self-pity? Can I feel hurt without turning everybody else into villains? Can I communicate clearly without making other people responsible for managing all of my emotions? That is hard work, friends, but it is such good, healthy work. I've talked before on the podcast about the idea that at some point in adulthood we have to stop waiting for other people to create our joy for us. And I think Mother's Day and birthdays really shine a light on this. Because sometimes we are quietly hoping, maybe this year I'll finally feel really seen. Maybe they'll really appreciate me. And when that doesn't happen, because let's face it, it usually doesn't, it feels devastating and personal. But I've noticed that some of the happiest women I know have learned how to participate in creating the life they want instead of sitting back and waiting to see what everybody else does for them. If you want connection, friend, initiate it. If you want a meaningful experience, plan one. If you want to feel celebrated, communicate what matters to you, including notes on how they could do it. This doesn't mean becoming controlling or demanding. It just means becoming honest. And honestly, I think a lot of resentment in families comes from people expecting others to read their minds. And most people just can't do that, right? Now, before we wrap this up, I do want to say this. Sometimes disappointment on holidays is revealing something real. Sometimes there actually are unresolved relationship issues, distance, entitlement, lack of effort, unhealed conflict. And I don't think mindset work means pretending that those things don't exist. Sometimes disappointment is information. Sometimes it's showing you that you need to have a conversation. And honestly, one of the biggest arguments my husband and I have ever had happened on Mother's Day about 10 years ago. And I think I may have mentioned this once on the podcast in one of my earlier episodes. But I don't even remember what the argument was about. I just remember getting my feelings hurt and then leaving the room so I could go cry. Which might sound normal, but it did point to the fact that in our marriage, I basically did not allow myself to cry in front of my husband. Early in our relationship, he had told me that tears felt manipulative to him because of a previous relationship. And to be fair, he had genuinely experienced tears being used for manipulation. So no wonder he felt that way. But I internalized that as, okay, I am not supposed to cry in front of him. So for something like 23 years, I pretty much didn't, unless someone died, because I figured grief was exempt from that rule. Anyway, that Mother's Day, I remember sitting there crying alone and suddenly thinking, life is not too short for this. Life is too long to live this way. It suddenly felt very ridiculous to me that I couldn't fully show my emotions in front of my own husband. And a few days later, I brought that up to him. And here's the funny part. He didn't even remember saying it. It had happened very early in our dating relationship and had carried this enormous emotional weight for me, as in, it felt like Moses came off the mountain with a thou shalt not cry in front of him. While it didn't even register for him long term. Now, he mentioned that crying made him uncomfortable. But he also agreed that I needed to be able to have emotions in front of him. And to his credit, he really leaned in and changed. Over the next several months, instead of letting me leave the room upset, he would actually follow me and just hug me and tell me it was okay to cry. And honestly, this felt like providential timing because I was heading straight into perimenopause and our girls were heading straight into puberty. And let me just say there were suddenly many more tears than there had ever been happening in our house. So I think that was God's perfect timing. That conversation changed our marriage. And here's why I'm telling you this. If I had only tried to quote unquote fix my thoughts without addressing the actual relational dynamic, we would have missed years of growth. And that's really the balance I've been trying to talk about throughout this whole episode. Sometimes we need to own what is ours to own. And sometimes we need to confront what needs to be confronted. And one more thing. I think one of the hardest parts of midlife is realizing that other people are not always going to love us in the exact ways we'd hoped they would. Sometimes they will surprise us beautifully. And sometimes our friends, our family, our children, our spouses, whoever it is, will disappoint us. Sometimes it's because they're distracted or immature or overwhelmed. Sometimes it's because we never actually told them what we needed. Sometimes it's because we attached a very painful story to what they've done. And sometimes it's because there really are relationship dynamics that need attention and honesty and repair. All of those things can be true. But I think emotional maturity is learning not to hand over complete responsibility for our happiness, our worth, or our emotional well-being to other people. It's learning how to create a life that contains joy and meaning and connection, even when the people around us are imperfect. Because when we stop asking other people to constantly prove our worth to us, we can love them with more realism, more honesty, and more peace. So what's mid about the midlife this week? Well, maybe it's finally getting exactly what you wanted, and then realizing it created a completely different problem. That's what. But the day before Mother's Day, Jeff was gone on a backpacking prep hike with the scout troop. And I decided this is the weekend. I'm doing it. Or at least I'm getting started on it. My oldest daughter helped me start taking all the books off the shelves, and I was labeling these stacks of books like Marian the Librarian. By the time Jeff got home, I had managed to clear two bookcases of books. And then because he is way more competent at these types of projects than I am, he basically stepped in and kind of took over, which honestly I knew was going to happen anyway when I started pulling these books off the shelves. But he even decided that he needed to cut the back of the bookcases so they would fit around the crown molding upstairs and sit flush against the wall, which apparently is just a thing that engineers and or handy people casually know how to do. And oh, they also have the tools to do it in the garage. So we finally got all four bookcases upstairs and anchored to the wall and started reloading books. But we had to stop about halfway through moving the books to cook dinner for our friends who were coming over. And then on Mother's Day, Jeff and Langley finished the project for me. And honestly, it looks amazing. It's exactly what I wanted. As soon as we buy a couple of comfy chairs, which, by the way, apparently the high-quality ones now cost about the same amount as a small used vehicle, we'll have this really cozy upstairs reading place. Perfect. Except I sat down Monday afternoon to record this podcast and realized something very important. Several hundred pounds of books apparently act as great soundproofing in my office. And now my office with hardwood floors and tall ceilings sounds echoey. So if this episode sounds a little different, that's why. So now I have exactly what I wanted upstairs and exactly what I did not want downstairs. And honestly, the whole thing feels very midlife to me. You solve one problem and uncover another one. You fix one hormone issue, and then that medication causes something else. You finally organize a room and then realize you need to wildly overprice chairs to finish the project. It's just life. A little happy, a little disappointed, a little confused about what to do next, very 50-50. And I guess that's the way it always is. Well, friends, that's all I've got for you this week. If you find yourself struggling with disappointment, resentment, family dynamics, or the emotional weight that often comes with this season of life, coaching is exactly the kind of place where we sort through all of those things together. I offer free consultation calls if you want to explore that. You can find me on social media at Loribuck Coaching or my website, Loribuckcoaching.com. That's L-O-R-I-B-U-C-K coaching.com. I'll see you next week.