After a daughter worked diligently to repair her elderly parents’ finances and helping them downsize, the mother resents her daughter’s help – leaving the daughter resentful, too. Advice columnist Eric Thomas weighs in.
Dear Eric:
I have spent a year helping my elderly parents sell their house and pay off tremendous debt, mostly due to my mother’s spending and hoarding. My father is unable to handle anything due to health issues. I have had help from my family so I’m not alone in this. I am still very involved with helping them with finances and doctors.
They are in a small rental now with no maintenance or yard duties. My issue is the bad feelings I have toward my mother after all we went through packing her house, moving them, dealing with the movers, dumpsters, estate and house sales.
She makes comments often about us taking her things away and taking her money (not true, but it is in safekeeping because of her very poor handling of money).
She also makes backhanded thank-you’s attached to criticisms about the way we did everything. I have a hard time being around her anymore.
Our relationship was not great to begin with. I have started therapy and understand I can’t change her or really have expectations of her as she is just incapable, but I still have so much resentment and bad feelings toward her. I’m not sure how to move on.
– Resented Helping Hand
Dear Helping Hand:
I’m glad you’ve started therapy. This is a long journey, but you’ve taken the right first step. Your therapist can help you sort through what’s yours to own and what feelings or sentiments you can release. Your therapist can also help you set up good boundaries with your mother, because it sounds like that’s going to be necessary.
A boundary won’t stop her from making remarks, but it can give you options for what to do and say and how to remove yourself from situations that are harmful to your emotional state.
It’s also helpful to right-size your mother’s response. Her hoarding and her financial mismanagement were likely caused by trauma, perhaps trauma that happened early in her life. That trauma hasn’t been addressed and so she’s still suffering, but without the same coping mechanisms. She’s also grieving the loss of her possessions. So, it may help you to remember that some of this is your mother’s pain talking.
You can’t take that away, but you can help guide her toward tools for addressing it. If she’s open to seeing a therapist, that would be wonderful. You might also talk to a financial adviser about other options for keeping her money safe. It sounds like it’s not healthy for her to have unfettered access to it, but there may be ways for her to feel more empowered and for you to feel less responsibility for keeping her away from her worst impulses.
R. Eric Thomas (he/him) is a national bestselling author, playwright, and screenwriter. His accomplishments include “Eric Reads the News,” a daily humor column covering pop culture and politics, serving as the interim Prudie for the advice column “Dear Prudence,” and “Congratulations, The Best Is Over.”
Send questions to eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.
©2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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