Dreaming about
your mother

Few people turn up in our dreams as often as our mothers, and few carry so many meanings at once. Dreaming about your mother usually reflects one of two things: your need for care, comfort or approval, or your actual relationship with her, with its warmth and its old arguments. A dream where she holds you and one where she won't look at you are both about her place in your life, seen from opposite ends.

Your history with her decides most of the reading. A loving mother, a difficult one, one who has died and one you hardly knew will all show up differently, and so will the age you are in the dream. Whether you're about to become a parent, have just moved out, or are now looking after her as she gets older changes it again.

What dreaming about your mother means

Before she's anything else, a mother is where you came from, and dreams draw on that in several ways. Which one fits depends on the mother you had, and the one you have now.

Care and comfort

The most basic mother dream is about being looked after. Mothers often appear when you're ill, exhausted or overwhelmed, cooking for you, tucking you in or telling you it will be all right. These dreams come when you need more care than you're getting, and especially when you're the one who usually does the caring. Ask who looks after you at the moment, and whether you let them.

The relationship as it is

Many mother dreams are about her, plainly. If you've had a disagreement, haven't called in a while or are worried about her health, she'll turn up at night (often in the most ordinary scenes). Dreams track the people and worries that fill our days,^[2] and a mother can fill a lot of them, even from a distance.

The voice you carry

Most of us carry a mother's voice inside us, praising, warning or criticizing, long after we've left home. A mother who tells you off in a dream is often that inner voice rather than the woman herself. If the scolding sounds familiar, ask whether you'd still agree with it today.

Where you come from

People talk about a mother tongue, a motherland and Mother Earth for a reason. A mother in a dream can stand for your roots, your culture or your family's way of doing things. That's truest when you've moved far away, or when the life you're building looks nothing like hers.

Dreaming about your mother at your childhood home

Dreaming of home and your mother together is common, and it tends to come at turning points. A move, a breakup, a new baby or a stressful job can send you back, in your sleep, to the kitchen you grew up in, with her at the stove. The dream is usually about safety and belonging. If the house was just as you remember it, it may be a comfort. If it was changed, empty or sold, the dream may be about accepting that the old version of home is gone. The page about home goes further into these dreams.

Dreaming about arguing with your mother

An argument with your mother in a dream is often the argument you'd never have in real life. It can come when you're making a choice she wouldn't approve of, or when you're tired of living by her rules even though she's no longer around to enforce them. Who won matters less than what was said. Write down the lines you remember, because they often show exactly what you'd like to tell her, or what you suspect she thinks.

Dreaming about your mother ignoring you

A mother who looks past you, chats with a sibling or doesn't hear you call her is a dream about wanting to be seen. It tends to come when you feel unappreciated, by her or by anyone you look to for approval, like a partner or a boss. And if you were a child in the dream, it may be an old feeling coming back. Was there a time when a new baby, or a hard year, took her attention away from you?

Dreaming about your mother comforting you

A hug from your mother, or her hand on your forehead, is one of the gentlest dreams you can have, and people often wake from it close to tears. It usually comes in hard times, but not always. If your mother is alive, it may be a nudge to call her. If she has died, it's often a way the mind keeps her comfort within reach. In Isaiah, God promises to comfort his people "as one whom his mother comforteth",^[4] and the image has lasted because almost everyone knows the feeling.

Dreaming about your mother being pregnant

Seeing your mother pregnant, especially when she's long past having children, often points to something new in the family or in you. It can reflect a change in her life (a new partner, a new start after retirement), or your own feelings about a younger sibling, or about her attention being divided. It can also mean something new is being born in you that's connected to her, like a trait or a talent you share.

Dreaming about your mother dying

This dream doesn't predict anything, however vivid it was. It usually reflects worry about her getting older, a growing distance, or a change that makes you less her child and more her equal. If your mother has already died, dreaming of her is part of how we keep loving the dead. And if those visits feel like more than memory, you may find the post on ancestral dreams helpful, which deals with dreams of family members who have passed on.

Dreaming about your mother according to Jung and Freud

Both men wrote about mothers, and their symbol lists meet in one unexpected place.

Jung on the two faces of the mother

Jung's essay on the mother archetype lists the images that can carry it, and most look nothing like a woman, from a church, a university or a whole country to a cave, a well, a tree, a cow and an oven.^[1] So a dream of a forest or the sea can be a mother dream in disguise. He also stressed that the archetype has two faces, the loving mother who feeds and protects and the devouring one who smothers and won't let go, and your dream mother can show either.

Freud on queens, ovens and a train leaving

In Freud's symbol list a dream king and queen are the dreamer's parents,^[3] so a mother who turns up as a queen, handing out orders in the middle of a supermarket, is where his method would start. His symbol list also puts the oven among the boxes and cupboards that stand for the womb, so a mother at the stove is on his list and Jung's, for different reasons. He also observed that dreams like to stage a death as someone setting off, which makes a mother leaving on a train possibly an ending of another kind, like you moving out or her role in your life changing. And he wanted your own associations first.

Other readings

Calvin Hall, an American psychologist, treated a dream as a mirror of how the dreamer sees things, and held that dream people are cast to fit that view: a mother you see as nurturing turns up doing something for you.^[5] A symbol, to him, expressed the view and didn't hide it, so the same dreamer might picture her as a cow,^[6] an image that is also on Jung's list.

Questions to ask about your mother dream

Only you know what your mother means to you, so the reading has to start there, with questions like these.

• Was she the mother you know now, or the one from your childhood?
• Did she give you something, or take something away?
• Were you a child or an adult in the dream?
• What's happening between you two at the moment?
• Who else in your life do you look to for care or approval?

Oniri asks about your mother and your life right now before reading the dream. A mother at the stove means one thing after a move and another after a fight.