CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - "I'm Glad My Mom Died" By Jeanette McCurdy, Emotionally Immature Moms, Boundary-Ignoring Gifts

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

Whitney breaks down Jeanette McCurdy's interview on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy. She discusses enmeshment, parentification and the painful process of accepting that a parent was abusive. Then she answers a listener question about an emotionally immature mother who insists on playing best friend and family authority at the same time.Whitney Goodman is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and the founder of Calling Home, a membership community that helps people navigate complex family dynamics and break harmful cycles.Have a question for Whitney? Send a voice memo or email to [e-mail] the Family Cyclebreakers Club⁠⁠Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhitFollow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft⁠⁠Order Whitney’s book, Toxic PositivityThis podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice.01:27 Jeanette McCurdy's Story18:32 Listener Question Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey everyone and welcome back to the Calling Home podcast. This is the podcast where we explore what it really means to break cycles, heal from family trauma, and create the relationships that you deserve. I'm Whitney Goodman. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and founder of the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home. And I am so glad that you're here with me today. If this is the first time you've listened to this show, I want to remind you that if you're finding a lot of value in these episodes, you can become a member of the Family Cycle Breakers Club, our membership community at Calling Home. as a member, you'll get access to exclusive content, community support, therapist-led groups, private discussion boards, and new resources every Monday that are specifically designed for people doing this hard work of breaking cycles and building a better family. Today's episode is a powerful one because I'm going to be discussing Jeanette McCurdy's

appearance on The Call Her Daddy podcast back in January, where she opened up about her memoir. I'm glad my mom died. and we're going to talk about the complex dynamics of power and control in her relationship with her mother and how you can apply that to your own life. Then I'm going to answer a listener question that I received this week that I think really beautifully connects to these conversations about mother-daughter dynamics. I want to thank you so much for all of your calls and questions submissions. You can always send me a voice note or an email to Whitney at callinghome.co. Let's go ahead and dive in. So I, I read Jeanette McCarty's book. I'm glad my mom died. I think it was such a compelling,

amazing memoir written by an adult who had a very difficult relationship with her mother. And her mother is now deceased. And I think that that really has allowed her to change the way that she speaks about this situation and thinks about it. And she talks about that in this interview. Jeanette was on the Call Her Daddy podcast with Alex Cooper in January, but we're getting to this. Now you can go back and listen to that episode if you would like to hear more about her story. For those of you that don't know much about her story, Jeanette's mother was diagnosed with cancer when she was two years old. And she described this feeling of living with her mom and her mom's personality style and mental health issues along with the cancer had her feeling like she was

always holding her breath and being like, when? is mom going to die? And there was this feeling in her home that like if they did anything wrong and they upset their mother, they could cause her to get sick again. And they were all very on edge about this. And she illustrates this concept of like understanding something of like my mom could die. She is sick. She had cancer. But I can't really articulate that. And so that feels very heavy to me as a young child. but I don't know who or how to talk about this thing. So I think a lot of times parents, when they're talking to their children about the past, will kind of be like, well, that wasn't happening to you.

I didn't talk to you about it. Everything was fine. I was okay, especially when they're talking about things like cancer or illness that ended up being okay or like working out in the end. But we know that when children experience life-threatening situations with their parents, when they are aware that their parents could die or be taken from them or something could happen to them, they may not fully understand the context of why that's happening. But they do feel this like survival instinct kind of takeover of like my caregiver,

the person that is supposed to keep me safe and protect me. There is something wrong with them. And they could be taken from me at any time. And if you have a parent who is not skilled at explaining that, talking about it, or being able to make space for the child's feelings while also working through their own or that person, that child doesn't have another caregiver that they can go to and talk to about this, which Jeanette did not have at the time, the child eventually learns, like, I need to keep my parents alive to secure my own safety. And this is more of like an unconscious type of response. You know, a five-year-olds might not be thinking this, but they certainly go into this mode of being like, better not upset mom, need to let mom rest, need to take care of mom. And yes, those can be good skills to learn and good adaptations, but it also is a huge weight for a child to carry on their own.

Now, Jeanette talks about how she consistently prioritized her mother above herself as a mode of, of survival. And her mother went into remission. By the time, Jeanette was three and a half. But this weaponization of the cancer was an ongoing control tactic. And her mom would kind of explain to the kids or say this off the cuff that like my cancer could come back at any moment. And so they lived in fear.

And some of you might recognize this feeling of like growing up feeling like you cannot have any feelings, emotions, or experiences that take up space in the family because they will overshadow what your parent is going through or there's not enough room then for your parents' feelings and concerns. And so because of that, you learn to totally monitor your parents' emotional state instead of your own. You are looking at them and watching how they're feeling, how they're operating, how they're moving throughout the world. And it's impossible for you to learn how you feel or to pay attention to your own emotions if you are constantly doing that for them, right? And I think that so many of the people that I work with and that are part of the Family

Cycle Breakers Club feel this way that when they get to adulthood and, you know, they start to question or people are asking them like, what do you want from life? How do you feel about this? Do you actually like this. Do you enjoy your job? Do you want to move here? They have no idea how to connect with that version of themselves or to even access those parts of them because they've gotten so skilled at shutting that off. Now, Jeanette's mother also asserted a lot of control over her and she chose a career path for her daughter when she was just six years old. And Jeanette has a lot insight about this. You can tell she's done a lot of therapy and work on kind of trying to understand why her mother did what she did. And she says in this episode, you know, I think she was trying to

feel seen through me and that her mother would light up when she was recognized in public or when she got a new role. And that's great. You know, I'm sure her mother was very proud of her and very interested in her success. But there's a very big difference between being proud of your child supportive of them and living through them. The other tricky part here is that Jeanette became the family breadwinner at the age of 13, which is an immense amount of pressure to put on a 13-year-old. And Jeanette kind of talks about like how she wasn't really totally aware at first that she was the breadwinner of the family, but over time she started to notice that like, okay, there was a pressure for her to perform. She knew that she was responsible for certain bills. She knew that she was responsible

for certain bills or how much money she had to make. And so she started to see herself in that role, like, oh, I am here to take care of my family and do this for them. That is my job. And she says in this episode, you know, my life felt like pressure for so long. And she was good at acting, but she couldn't really articulate why she didn't really like acting if she was good at it. and if she thought she enjoyed it.

And I think it was, you know, she had this realization that like the success was never about her. It became such a burden. It was like she had to provide and perform for her mother. And her mother was the one kind of driving the ship. And so even though she was good at it and she may have liked it, that was ultimately tainted by that relationship with her mother. This is a really clear example of parenthesification.

and role reversal between parent and child here. We have the child stepping into the role of being the breadwinner, the financial provider, the one who's working in the family, and also having kind of some of that emotional prerentification of, I am here to serve you to make you happy, make you proud. I need to do all of these things so that you look at me in a positive light, right? And the loss of childhood makes it very, very hard for kids to develop any of their own identity because it's already being handed to you on a platter, right? Like, you are the person who supports the family.

You are an actor. This is how you make me proud. Otherwise, I am going to reject you or our family is going to not be able to afford our house or our water bill. And even if this is not like explicitly stated, it's implied to a degree that the child absorbs it. And Jeanette talks about some of these control tactics, you know, that her mother would use. Like, you're going to break my heart if you don't do that or she would get like hysterical about things. She had no ability to reflect on her daughter's experience.

You know, she, Jeanette talks about how like, why didn't you try? Why don't you try to reflect or ask me what this is like for me? And that was just not possible with her mother. And when you grow up with a parent like that, it can feel very, very lonely, almost like you are just a container for all of their hopes and wishes and dreams and frustrations. And they are living through you. They don't see you as an actual person. Now, something interesting that she points out that I think I've been hearing a lot about lately in like the public discourse is the idea that. that some siblings can still get along with a parent, have a good relationship with them,

and one of the other ones does not. So in Jeanette's case, her two other siblings did not receive the same treatment that she did. And, you know, she said that she experienced some resentment as a kid and as a teen. And she realizes that her siblings felt it too. She talks about how she had to work and her mother was always pushing her and her brothers would just be like playing video games and doing whatever. And I imagine that if we think about, you know, if any of you are that sibling that was left to like play the video games, do whatever you want, the parent wasn't paying attention, and you had another sibling that was getting all the focus and all the attention,

even though that experience was negative for that sibling, you also can be jealous and resentful of the attention and affection and focus that they are getting from that parent. and Jeanette, like any other child in that position, was very resentful of her brothers for being able to kind of fly under the radar and get to do what they want and not experience this type of abuse at the hands of their mother. And Jeanette realizes, you know, this really important realization for anyone that's had this experience with their siblings that an abusive parent does not want you to have allies, even your siblings. They want you to be isolated and alone. people are easier to control.

And so they don't want you to feel like your siblings have your back or like they can help you escape from that situation. They do try to divide and conquer and kind of make you not trust your siblings, not feel like you can rely on them, make you feel like you're very different, make one of you feel special and the other cast aside. These are all very common tactics that are utilized in these types of feelings. And Jeanette goes on to talk about like the destruction of boundaries in her relationship with her mother and how they bonded through a shared eating disorder.

And I found this very interesting. And I wanted to bring this up for anyone who grew up with a parent who maybe they use substances with that parent, they would engage in illegal activity, eating disorder type of behaviors, that she talks about how that was actually a good time in their relationship. and it was fun and enjoyable and bonding and they would do it together at the end of the day and she would get her mom's attention and a lot of children will do things with their parents that they don't actually like or maybe on some level they know are bad for them or that come back to kind of haunt them later simply because they are meeting that need of getting attention and love or affection

or something from their parent through that activity. and they cannot get that otherwise. And when this is going on with Jeanette, she starts to realize that like there is no privacy in this relationship. They are sort of like one person. They're expected to consistently do the same thing. And I think it's so hard to see this type of abuse when you're in it.

Because it's your parent and you feel like you should be able to trust them and rely on them. Now, Jeanette talks about a really important feeling that I'm sure a lot of you are either experiencing right now or you have experience throughout this process. And this was the fact that when she started to realize what was going on with her mom and she went to therapy, that she couldn't handle the thought of her mom being abusive. And she says, like, I had to run. I can't go near this. She did not want to accept that framing from anyone else or her therapist. Now, this is why I tend to believe that there are more adults who are averse to accepting that their parent has been abusive than there are adults who just want to like label their parent as abusive for no reason or because they were like conned into it or something or someone told them that they that their parent is abusive.

It is very, very hard for adults to admit that they have been mistreated by a parent because they ultimately feel that it is a reflection on them. It is a very painful thing to realize. And nobody wants to say like, oh, my parents abused me. And, you know, Jeanette says, like, she had to go through this long process of coming to terms with the abuse and saying, like, my mom wasn't capable of having my best interest at heart. There's a lot of grief in that realization. And she says something next in this interview that I love and wanted to share with all of you. And that is, she says, now I'm able to just miss her sometimes, which I take full credit for.

And I think what Jeanette is speaking to here is that I have done so much work on myself, on understanding this situation, on loving myself and accepting who my mother was, that now I can engage with parts of her memory that I miss and see them for what they are, not shame myself for that, but also that I take full credit for the work that I did to get myself here, right? And she says, I don't feel angry at her anymore. And I think that's because of the work I've done. And it's true. I'm sure that is completely accurate. And you can see here, you know, she talks about writing the book and how the book being a success is what allowed her to kind of move into this space. And that if the book wasn't successful, maybe she wouldn't have felt this way. And I thought that was really just an honest, vulnerable answer of like, When I felt like I was validated and understood, I was able to kind of step back from this and be like, okay, this is real.

This is what happened to me. I am allowed to be upset about this. Other people understand this. And I think this is like the power of her owning her own process to get where she needed to be and being fully honest and being seen by people in her honesty. The key takeaway, I think, from this also is that, you know, you can miss someone and still acknowledge that they hurt you and that this process of kind of getting to this place does not excuse any of the behavior that this person did or the person that hurt you.

Moving from like only anger to also acceptance doesn't mean that it was okay. If you want to apply some of these lessons from Jeanette's interview and from what she shares in her book to your own life, I have some reflection questions for you that you can answer. So where in your life do you prioritize someone else's needs over your own as a survival mechanism? What dreams or desires did you abandon to keep someone else happy? How were you isolated from potential allies or support systems in your life? What truths are you still avoiding about your family dynamics? And what does healing honestly and openly look like for you. I think some of the biggest takeaways we can take from this interview and from

Jeanette's story is that you can acknowledge what happened without minimizing any of it. And when you learn to identify and express what happened to you honestly, you're able to own that story and say, this is what happened to me. It's real. It's true. This is what I lived through. And when people can receive that well and openly and validate it, it really does a lot for that healing process. All right. Now let's get to those caller questions. Whitney, I wanted to thank you so much for this podcast. It has helped me so much, especially since I've become a mother. And a lot has come up as I've been dealing with my own childhood trauma as I've been for an apparent, my own strong-willed child. But

I know this month we have been talking about grieving complicated relationships, and boy, do I think I have a complicated relationship with my own mother. I had my own, my first child at 36 and about to have my second at nearly 40. I knew that I had to take action early on in life after I left my parents' house and got married. work on my own mental health so that I wouldn't bring those same complicated relationships and generational trauma to my own kids. But my question is, as I've become a mother, I've noticed that my own mother, who I have been distant with just because we have differences in terms of parenting. and she just is honestly a ball of anxiety and doesn't know how to parent her own kids.

I have three younger sisters and she wants to be their best friends. She wants to do that with me, yet she also wants to still parent me and parent my own child, but also expect me to have the same love and gratitude and return. In addition to that, she overgifts considerably. We live in another state from her. So she likes to send huge boxes of things that are not age-appropriate and are just overwhelming for me. and also not needed.

So how do I deal with an emotionally immature mom who doesn't seem to honestly listen to my boundaries? I have been nice. I have been starting to become a lot more stern with my boundaries, but she still seems to not understand and or listen. So I don't know if the next step is to cut her off completely because she doesn't seem to understand the clear set boundaries that I have placed. I've sent her numerous tax messages, emails, voicemails. Thank you so much to that caller for calling in and asking this question.

I think it's really common, and we talk about this a lot in our groups inside the family cycle breakers club, for people to have kids and then realize, like, oh, there's a lot of stuff with my own parents that I want to work on. Or maybe I don't want my kids to be experiencing X behavior from them, whatever it is. And so I want to validate for you that, like, it makes sense that there's these complicated dynamics coming up and there's a lot of things that you're thinking about. But the core question here is like, what do I do about a mom who consistently shows me that she cannot follow my boundaries or my sort of limits that I'm putting on our relationship? And you brought up the gifts thing. Like your mother sending gifts that are not age appropriate. They're too big.

They're overwhelming for you. She doesn't listen to your boundaries. And I imagine that every time one of those gifts shows up at your door, you're like, oh my gosh, here is another moment where this person who is my mother is not respecting my wishes, not listening to me, et cetera. That being sad, you've got someone in front of you that is proven that they cannot follow directions and they have no interest in abiding by those boundaries. And so you could say to your mom, like, I'm not going to have a relationship with you and I'm not, I don't want you to send gifts anymore. I don't know that she's going to listen to

that since she hasn't up to this point. And so I like to kind of come back to what can you do? So a package arrives at your door. You can return it to sender. You can donate it, throw it away, put it away for when your kids are older. I want to encourage you to empower yourself to make a different decision in the face of her disregard for your boundaries and limits rather than focusing on how you can convince her to listen to you and to respect those boundaries and limits because she is not going to. And because this is something that I would say, okay, like this is not life-threatening or dangerous at this point. This is something that is more upsetting. It's very inconvenient. And it's also just like a proof of a bigger theme here at play and a larger problem.

that I want you to think about how am I going to take over this dynamic and make it easier for myself because yes, it would be great if you had a mother that would listen to you and abide by your boundaries and be insightful and reflective, but she is not doing that. And so especially if you're not at the point or if you never get to the point where you say, I don't want to have a relationship with this woman or I don't want to kind of explain that to her and cut her off. like this can be a good way to reclaim some agency over the issue and make it feel like you have the ability to have some authority over this. The other thing I want to talk about that you brought up was

like she wants to be my best friend but also wants to be the parent and the authority, especially generationally. So she wants to be on equal footing with me that we are friends and we exchange things in this way. But then she also wants to be the matriarch of the family and so get to make decisions about the children and also be my parent and get to make decisions about me. You can't do all those things at the same time. And so I think that's something we also have to realize is that, like, I cannot be both an obedient child and a equal adult at the same time. This person is putting me in an absolute double bind where I cannot win. And so I need to say, I'm not going to participate in that dynamic.

I am the parent of my children. I get to make the decisions. I get to make the calls. She can try to be that person in our lives, but she ultimately has no authority and is not going to be able to do that. Now, if this person, your mother, does not abide by any of that and she continues to try to encroach and demand some type of authority, then that's when, of course, you may have to set stronger limits or boundaries with this person. Thank you so much for calling in and asking

that question. I appreciate. And I think a lot of people will learn from what you said. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that you enjoyed some of Jeanette McCurdy's story. I think it's such a powerful one because it shows us, even in the most intense circumstances, like being a child actor, being a breadwinner, enmeshed with a parent, anything like that. Healing and moving forward is possible. It's not easy, but it can be done. And on the other side, there can be a lot of freedom and truth. If there's anything you take away from this episode today, I want you to know that you don't

have to have all the answers right now. You don't have to figure out every complex dynamic in your family. You just have to be willing to start asking the honest. honest questions and sitting with those uncomfortable truths. I think if Jeanette can go from being able to even consider that her mother was abusive to writing a book called I'm glad my mom died and being able to miss her mother sometimes while still holding the truth of what happened, that healing is possible for all of you. And to the listener that sent in a question this week, thank you for trusting me with your story. I hope that Jeanette's journey also gave you some language

and some validation for what you've experienced. If you want to continue this conversation and connect with others who are doing this work, I'd love to invite you to join our membership community, the Family Cycle Breakers Club. You can find all the information at callinghome.co, and this is a space where we can support each other, share resources, and remind yourself

that you don't have to do all of this in isolation, because that's probably what's keeping you stuck in the first place. Thank you for being. being here and I'll see you next week. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Calling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below.