Talk about it to another adult you trust first, then talk to your mom when you are less upset and have a better sense of how you feel about your problem. In other words, find someone else who will help you figure out on your own how you feel about your problem and what to do about it. If you talk to your mom when you feel more confident about the course of action you want to take and have the validation of someone you respect, you’ll feel less need to get defensive or hurt when your mom doesn’t agree.
A mother-daughter relationship in which the daughter can talk to her mom about anything is not really the norm once we get old enough to have grown-up problems. It does happen, of course, but many normal mothers and daughters who love each other very much–that is, who absolutely do have a relationship that deserves to be called “proper”–do not have that. There is no person in our lives who can be everything that a romantic ideal says they can be. Life is the happiest if we affectionately give our loved ones room to typical instead of ideal or “according to the standard.” As the psychologists have been known to put it: The definition of a dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.
A lot of parents have trouble letting go of control of their children, especially if the grown child has very different views and standards than their parents. Sometimes it is the grown child who is more “conservative” or “strict,” sometimes it is the parents. Sometimes the problem can even be that parent and child are too much alike, care too much about impressing each other, and get far too upset over having differences of opinion.
Look around you. Most adults have differences of opinion, because most adults think for themselves. Even your mother’s devout friends don’t agree with her about everything. The saints have had their disagreements, too. It is very normal.
If you don’t believe me, try a book called “You’re Wearing That?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation” by Deborah Tanner. It was a best seller, so a lot of libraries have it. It doesn’t “explain everything” or anything like that, but it lets you step back from your own situation a bit by letting you see that you are hardly alone! It may help you gain some perspective.