TL;DR Advice for how to make mother feel connected to me when I'm away without allowing her unreasonable influence over my life.

My mother (Late 50s) has struggled with loneliness for sometime. She has been through divorce, had one relationship in the 15 years since that lasted less than a year, and lived through the pandemic in a house by herself this past year. She's recently moved to a big British city in the north to find a sense of community at her age.

Meanwhile; I'm (early 20s) in my graduate year at the very south of the UK, so a whole day's travel to go see her. Essentially: I'm annoyed by her neediness when she connects with me. I feel like my desire to involve her in my life is spoiled by both her neediness and her almost impulsive need to insert herself as an maternal authority figure.

She'll tell me on the phone "I feel like you're very far away, that's how I feel". I don't know what to fucking tell her when she won't even ask me "So how's life?" And the moment I talk about my life she can't handle not being there in person to support me. Can't tell offhandedly tell her I finished my uni essay early; she'll just question whether I've done a draft and hammer down how the family's gonna look it over and help me through unit. My essay's on pornography so uhhh, I need that much space from her at least. And my life is mostly my schoolwork so, y'know. Can't talk about personal issues because she'll worry that with out her I'll go off the deep end.

The most egregious examples of this is the pressure I feel under to live with her. I remember at one point she laid it down, trying to convince me to promise I'd live within a 15-mile radius of her. That's just not fucking reasonable; I need to find work in my career path. She says, Oh I'll help you find career work local to me. As well as knowing better than that, I just wanna live my life and find myself like anybody else should reasonably expect! I've shut down that discussion with relative success, but I still feel this underlying pressure that I am depriving my mother of an opportunity to anchor herself to someone close if I am not near her.

It's just so weird, because when I am with her in person, we generally get along really well! it's like there's something missing over the phone. And I realize, just now, that is is partly my fault. I don't post in our family group chat because I have nothing to add or say. This is likely what causes me to seem distant. It doesn't come naturally tin the way that dropping a mesasage in my friends' Discord but I guess I struggle with finding anything meaningful to say.

That probably is the solution, to post more there, though I guess I struggle with what I should do to keep a family close over a distance (within reason), especially as my mum's need to anchor herself, while understandable, manifests in really off-putting ways.

Any insights?