One evening after a stressful day at work, Teni sat in traffic scrolling through her phone. She came across a funny video about African mothers, and the comments were filled with jokes like “African mothers will humble you.” “Na so dem train us.” She laughed too until She remembered how terribly her mother criticized her. Her mother provided everything she needed but rarely said “I’m proud of you.” “I love you” or “I’m sorry.” She only found faults in Teni.

She felt an unexpected sadness, not because she hated her mother but underneath the love, there were still wounds. And you will agree that so many daughters grew up with invisible wounds that later showed up as low self-esteem, people pleasing, fear of failure and emotional distance.

The beautiful thing is that healing is possible and you are struggling with this, here are 5 things that can help you.

1. Accept that love and pain can exist together

One of the biggest emotional battles many women face is believing that admitting their mother hurt them means they are ungrateful. It does not. Your mother can be hardworking and emotionally unavailable. She can love you deeply and still damage your self-esteem. She can sacrifice for you and still say things that wounded you. Two things can be true at once.

2. Stop minimizing your pain

Many women say things like “at least she tried,” “other people had it worse,” “That’s just how African mothers are.” While these statements may be true, constantly dismissing your pain keeps you emotionally stuck. What hurt you… hurt you. You do not need permission to acknowledge it. You do not need to compare your pain to somebody else’s before it becomes valid. Stop minimizing your pain!

3. Learn to reparent yourself

Many women enter adulthood waiting for their mothers to suddenly become softer, emotionally expressive or apologetic. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes it never does. Part of healing is learning to give yourself the things you did not receive emotionally.

If nobody reassured you growing up, start speaking kindly to yourself. If your emotions were dismissed, learn to validate your own feelings. Reparenting yourself means becoming emotionally safe for yourself.

4. Stop passing the pain forward

Unhealed pain has a way of traveling through generations. You might find yourself becoming exactly what hurt you because pain feels familiar. You criticize others harshly because harshness raised you. You suppress emotions because vulnerability was never allowed in their homes. Healing requires intentionality.

Ask yourself; Am I normalizing emotional damage because it feels familiar? Breaking cycles is difficult because it means choosing differently from what raised you. But it is one of the most powerful things a woman can do. You do not have to inherit every pattern you were given.

5. Allow yourself to see your mother as human

This may be the hardest step of all. At some point, you will realize your mother was not just “Mummy.” She was a woman. A woman with disappointments, fear, pressure, trauma, dreams she never got to pursue, and emotional wounds nobody helped her heal. Understanding this does not erase your pain. But sometimes it softens the anger.

So, it is okay to feel hurt but bear in mind many African mothers were raising children while carrying burdens they never spoke about. Some were surviving difficult marriages, financial hardship, emotional neglect and societal pressure all at once. And while that does not excuse harmful behaviour, but if they knew better, they would’ve done better.