Selena Gomez’s mom, Mandy Teefey, is the living definition of strength. As People reports, she gave birth to Gomez at just 16 years old and was determined to give her child a better upbringing than her own.
“I was a teen mom with Selena, obviously, and was very judged by that, even by my counselors and my teachers [who said] that I failed and just let go of it,” Teefey told Entertainment Tonight in 2017. “…My neighborhood was a really rough neighborhood [with] gangs. With all of that stuff, and when I got pregnant, I think that’s what triggered [me], because I was like, ‘OK, I have another person depending on me. I gotta get straight,’ and that’s when I started hammering through.”
For Teefey—one of Glamour’s 2024 Women of the Year alongside a few other very famous mothers—“hammering through” in part meant appearing in music videos, commercials, and theater shows around Grand Prairie, Texas, where she raised Gomez. That’s where she could grab some extra cash—and also, accidentally, where Gomez caught the acting bug.
“She went to one of my rehearsals with me and sat through the whole thing, not moving. On the way home, she was quiet, and then she goes, ‘You know, mom, that might be funnier if you did it this way.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, no. She’s going to be an actor,’” Teefey told The New York Times in 2017.
Cut to more than two decades later: Gomez is more than just an actor. She’s a cultural phenomenon with albums, films, TV shows, and a billion-dollar beauty brand to her name. Gomez knows she couldn’t have gotten here without her mama.
“When I started working, my mom was the person in my life that helped guide me through most of that,” Gomez told TIME a few years back. “Everything that I am has kind of become a little bit of what my mom has gone through. She had the ability to make me feel like I was still capable of doing anything I wanted.”
Together, Selena Gomez and Mandy Teefey have become quite the Hollywood duo, producing projects like The Broken Hearts Gallery and 13 Reasons Why. They also co-founded the mental health organization Wondermind. But their number-one priority is being mother and daughter to each other. “A mom’s love for their children is pretty fierce,” Teefey wrote on Instagram back in 2017, per People.
And Gomez’s love for Teefey is just as fierce, as these moments, below, show.
Gomez says she owes her life to Teefey.
That’s how she captioned a May 2019 Instagram post featuring a throwback picture of young Teefey holding baby Gomez. In a similar post the next year, Gomez wrote to Teefey, “I love this woman more than anyone could ever know.. happy mommas day!”
She’s also so proud of her mom.
“My mom has just walked through so much in her life,” Gomez said on SiriusXM in 2022. “I’m proud of her. She’s just done so much and she’s really wonderful and she’s just raised me to want to be a good person and do a good job and be kind.”
Gomez says Teefey is her “partner” in life.
“my momma. I sit back and think about how much she has done and shown me,” Gomez wrote on Instagram in 2017. “It truly has blown me away. She teaches me most about life and I couldn’t be luckier to have a partner like her in life.”
Gomez knows how much Teefey sacrificed for her.
During an acceptance speech at the 2014 Teen Choice Awards (per Fox), Gomez called Teefey “the greatest human being in the world.”