This study aimed to understand the experiences and meanings of relationship changes between middle-aged married women and their mothers. To explore the contextualized meanings embedded in participants’ individual lives, a narrative inquiry methodology was employed. Three middle-aged married women who perceived a clear and subjective change in their relationships with their mothers were selected through purposeful sampling. In addition to in-depth interviews, supplementary materials such as picture books, photographs, poems, and journals were collected through emails, phone calls, and social media to enrich the participants’ narratives. Using the narrative inquiry framework proposed by Clandinin and Connelly, field texts were constructed and then reconstructed into research texts by considering temporality, spatiality, and sociality. The narratives of participants revealed four core themes: The Sunflower That Bows Its Head, My Shadow Reflected in Mother’s Mirror, The Seesaw Game in the Fog, and A Long Journey Back to Myself. The findings showed that for middle-aged women, changes in the mother-daughter relationship had a profound impact beyond the family system, facilitating self-reflection and a redefinition of life’s meaning. Through these changes, the women engaged in a process of reconstructing the meanings of “being a mother” and “being oneself.” Based on these findings, the study discusses practical and therapeutic implications for counseling middle-aged women
