I always take this day to spend extra time thinking about Mama. Not because I don’t think of her on other days, but because I think it seems acceptable to say that I’m taking time on the anniversary of her passing to be reflective…like someone needs to give me a hall pass or something to finally go outside for some air.  

Most anniversaries I take time to go through some of her belongings, connect with her Spirit, talk to her, or write her a letter. I let her know that I think of her and I pray that she is at peace. I visualize her Soul as being free and that usually gives me comfort.

This anniversary is a little different. Today, I am focusing on myself and my healing after losing my mother. They say “time heals everything,” and I believe that is only partially true. What you do with that time has the ability to heal or not. 

I took the early years off…I was busy raising my young kids and was afraid that if I really looked at the loss, the sadness, and the grief that I would get sucked in. I was afraid that I’d never get out of bed and that I wouldn’t be able to care for my kids. 

So I managed to find ways to turn sadness into gratefulness. I would often cry when I poured myself a cup of tea, remembering that I would have tea with Mama, and acknowledging that I would never have a cup with her again…ever. I would cry so much that I would wonder if I should even make myself tea. But eventually, I learned to exchange “I miss you” for “thank you for the memories.” We only miss because we love, and so I chose to focus on the love over the missing. 

That has been helpful, but life, love and loss are so much more complex than that. 

Our relationship left much to be desired. Over the past decade, I’ve gained more compassion and understanding for Mama, for who she was and why, and even why our relationship was the way that it was. I am comforted by the feeling that we have a stronger, more loving connection now than we had when she was on this earth. 

But even with that, I knew there was more work to be done. Working on my memoir has highlighted areas of my life and losses that still hurt. No matter how far I seem to have come, I have this nagging feeling that there is more work to be done.

In 2014 I purchased the book, Motherless Daughters, two years after Mama passed away. This book focused on daughters, most of whom lost their mothers earlier in life, and the profound impact that loss has on a their entire life. This was a book full of stories from young women like me. This book was a “must-read” for me, but yet, I didn’t.

Despite packing the book with me on trips I would hardly crack it open. We moved three times since 2014, and the book has tagged along, waiting to be read. Oftentimes when I would feel a pang of grief, my mind would go to that unread book, wondering if it had any salve for me. But, what if I read it and it makes me more sad? The title and cover already made me sad. 

But now, nearly a decade later, I felt like I had the strength to look at it for real. My kids are largely independent and I don’t feel that they constantly need me, so I could take some extra time for myself if needed and they would understand.

I finally started reading it and it has not made me sad. Instead, I realize that I am far from alone in my jumble of emotions. I realize that it’s not uncommon for a daughter to grieve the loss of her mother for decades after her passing. Society’s timeline of how long grieving should take is simply not true in practice. 

Here are some quotes from the book that resonated with me:

“When a mother dies, a daughter’s mourning never completely ends.”

 

“Mourning was (and sometimes still is) treated as something that has to be fixed or overcome, not as a lifelong process of accommodation and acceptance.”

I learned that the infamous 5 Stages of Grief were never intended to be for loss of a loved one…they were outlined for those facing a terminal illness. Placing this timeline on grieving survivors has only done more harm than good. 

I am assured by the fact that I am not the only one who was forever changed by the loss of my mother.

I am taking the time to have more compassion for myself, my younger self, my child like self who will always yearn for a loving mother, even more more loving than my own, no matter how old I get and no matter how old my children get. And that is more than ok, it’s normal. The fact that no one really talks about it makes us think it’s not normal. But we can change that.