Motherless Daughters
If you are a woman who has lost her mom—whether it was years ago or yesterday, through death or estrangement—I’m guessing you feel that loss as pain at times. Maybe you struggle with the past, the future. . .the void.
Even if you’ve never known what it’s like to have a loving, supportive mother, you see moms and daughters all around you—smiling at each other, holding hands, talking, leaning on each other in every sense of the word, and you know you don’t have THAT.
The cultural expectation we learn to have is that mothers are here for us for most of our own adulthoods. If we are lucky, we have reason to expect them to be supports, good examples, and sources of guidance and unconditional love. When we don’t get to have our moms “long enough” or at all, we may feel a void in not just our lives, but inside ourselves.
Major loss can confuse identity and chop your life story in two.
If you have been adequately mothered from an early age, the normative expectation of having the constant of an older, caring woman who knows you, loves you, and supports you probably feels like it fits. We come to depend on it and see ourselves in relationship to our moms. It can be like an echo—knowing Mom is out there thinking of you, wishing you well, hopefully loving you unconditionally no matter what you’re going through. The source of our very existence is there—our life story has a beginning that is tangible; with a mother alive, our own life and who we know ourselves to be makes sense in a fundamental way.
Without my mom, who teaches me to be a woman? a mom? Who remembers who I used to be? What do I do without my mom as a grandmother for my kids?
When your mother dies or becomes estranged, you may suddenly have trouble relating to yourself as someone who is intimately known and loved. Overnight, you may go from what feels like a normal person with somewhere to land to a “motherless daughter,” adrift and ungrounded. This can feel surreal or empty, like some foundational rug you didn’t even know was there, whipped out from under you.
“Even when grief is adequately expressed and the remaining family members are supportive and loving, motherless women find themselves longing for the lost parent at critical junctures in their lives: the first day of school, onset of menstruation, loss of virginity, marriage, childbirth, menopause.”
You may feel alienated from others who still have their moms, especially if you were young when you lost your mom, particularly around occasions like Mother’s Day, and all the “critical junctures” of life when you expected to have Mom there, helping and loving you through them, witnessing and supporting you though the high’s and low’s. The milestones and big-deal experiences, especially female experiences, yet to come may feel daunting and unbearably sad without your mom. How can you possibly face the seasons of your life you’ve never seen, the transitions and the challenges so personal there is no one else who’d understand, without her example and support. You may begin to worry your own life may end prematurely and/or the way your mother’s did, causing anxiety, maybe Depression or an existential crisis.
The process of redefining who you are without your mother can be bumpy, but it is possible. As you grieve with intention and continue to invest energy in what you care about—including continuing to honor and connect with your mom—a sense of normalcy will slowly be restored. Meaning-making is possible. Post-traumatic growth is possible. Loss may come to feel like a defining part of who you are, but it can be integrated as part of your story rather than the whole story, and it can help crystallize your values, your inner strength, and gratitude for life in profound ways.
Staying Connected
Day of the Dead altars are displayed in Mexican homes and public spaces to honor and commune with loved ones who have died, and celebrate the cycle of life itself.
Losing a mother is one of the most difficult experiences there is. Even if your relationship was difficult, the longing for a mother’s love and attention is universal. The loss of that or the loss of hope for that affects our day-to-day reality, and it affects the deeper currents of the meaning of our lives. When this centering thread is pulled out of the fabric of our lives, we are left at loose ends.
Healing is not just about learning to reorganize your sense of self and learning to live differently with new or deepened supports, it’s about continuing to nurture your connection to the unique woman who was your mom. It’s about maintaining a relationship with her, even though she is no longer here in body. This is not just for “spiritual people” who believe in life after death. This is for all daughters without mothers.
According to modern grief research and the lived experience of countless grievers—myself included—continuing the bond with a loved one who has died in some way is crucial to healing and meaning-making. Having lost my mom when I was 24, I continue to relate to her and intentionally carry the values we shared forward in how I live my life. I will always do this because it helps me feel close to her and it affirms the reality and value of her life for me and my family. Continuing to include her in how I parent, how I show up as a wife and a friend, what I choose to do with my leisure time, and so much more allows me to share her with others and, in a way, “live for her.” I experience keeping her present in my heart and home as a tribute to her. I share memories of her with those who never knew her and I make art and engage in rituals that allow me to be with her spirit and memories of her. Both ceremonial rituals for sacred times and thoughtfully done day-to-day acts that evoke her ways of life honor who she was and how she helped shape the person I am today.
In the Japanese art of kintsugi, ceramics are altered by filling cracks with gold to accentuate and celebrate broken places,
In therapy with me, you will explore your relationship with your mother and how she and your loss continue to impact you. In Japanese culture, the kintsugi custom is to fill cracks in pottery with gold to highlight and even celebrate the beauty of broken things. We will honor the cracks in your heart and the broken places in your life story too. As painful and fracturing as loss can be, there is meaning and strength to be found in it when you are ready. As Leonard Cohen says, “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”
Finding Support in Community
While the individual support of a friend, relative, or therapist—or, ideally, all of the above—who can care for you and witness your grief process is crucial, taking regular time to be with your grief in the nurturing community of a support group can deepen and speed your healing. Healing the trauma of loss and growing from it is not just about time; it takes active, intentional grief work and that’s hard and especially painful to do alone. There is nothing like being with a group of other women who know the pain and all the little details of what it means to be in your shoes. From commiserating over the annoying things people say to you when you’re grieving to sharing the gory details of the loss stories you can’t tell anyone else, participating in a support group is soothing and impactful.
Because I believe so much in the power of community and creativity to sustain and heal our souls, I’ve created Healing Through Art: Creative Support for Motherless Daughters, a biweekly support group for women in their 20’s through 50’s who have lost moms and want to play with art, writing, and ritual to mourn, heal, and grow with others who “get it.” Though it is an open-ended group and participants can come and go, this group has been created to cultivate a community of friends to learn with and lean on, for now or the long haul.
To learn more and register, visit my group page on Forum, a platform for virtual peer support groups to help members cope with life’s greatest challenges, by clicking the button above.
