Originally published by
, this essay is being reposted with permission.A daughter without her mother is a woman broken. It is a loss that turns into arthritis and settles deep into her bones. - Kristin Hannah.
When my mom called to tell me that there was a mass in her chest in the spring of 2019 one of the first thoughts I had included my son Micah. What will we do without her? Though there was still testing to be done and it would be weeks before her “official cancer diagnosis”; I knew.
Calling my mom my best friend was nothing short of the truth. We had an incredibly close relationship throughout my entire life and she reminded me several times in the ten years I lived in Seattle that she couldn’t believe I left her.
My move resulted in her using her 5-6 weeks of vacation time each year to visit the PNW. She melded into our daily lives when she visited. She had a knack of making things better; be it the pantry layout or the way she could get the shower glass clean without any streaks.
In 2014 when I had my son Micah she really stepped up to shine. Growing up, like many do, I categorized her as the “best mom”. Watching her as a grandma was next level. I believe it was her god given role.
The bond Micah and her had mimicked ours in some ways. She was a safe space for him and he yearned to share the ordinary as well as extraordinary days and moments of his life with her.
Her cancer diagnosis impacted all of us. I was 99.9% sure I was not capable of continuing to mother without her love and support. The thought made me physically ill. And then I was forced to.
My mom died on April 1, 2020 and as I lay on her lifeless, warm body minutes after she took her last breath I wept for myself and for my son. The story I was making up in my mind was that we were all fucked - there was no way I could get myself together enough to be a mother when I lost my own; my best friend.
It felt like some impossible round hole, square peg situation. For a while, it was.
My early grief was messy. Like, really messy. Panic attack messy. Numbing with alcohol messy. Hormonal imbalance messy. Losing someone when the world had just shut down due to a global pandemic only complicated things. We didn’t have the closure of a service and my husband and son were still thousands of miles away finishing e-learning in Seattle.
Though I had just earned a tenure track position as a Communication Studies Professor at Bellevue College I wanted to move “home”, whatever that meant. In many ways I felt like my home died when my mom left her body. I’m an only child and wanted to be near my dad in the midwest. A full circle moment.
I headed back to Seattle, we packed up and listed our house. A dear friend suggested that I consider what it might look like for me to honor my mom. I had known all along that I would lay her ashes into the sea at Cannon Beach, Oregon, a place that held special memories for our family.
On July 26, 2020 I walked into the surf of the Pacific Ocean at sunset with a bag of my mom’s ashes in my hands. I reached in and took a handle of the coarse, gritty dust and sprinkled her into the sea. You’re free, mom. You’re home. I watched as tiny shards of bone washed over my pink toenails in the water, you can breathe again.
The next day my mom gave me the biggest sign that she was with us, she was watching, and I was destined to mother while motherless. She insisted. I was in the hospital for what turned out to be another panic attack when I found out I was pregnant.
I screamed for her from the hospital bed, a guttural scream. The nurses handed me my phone to call her which made the screaming louder and deeper, from my insides. They wiped the tears off my face in silence after I told them she was dead.
I learned early in my grief journey that folks, even medical professionals, often don’t have any idea what to do with grief.
In that moment there were two things that were true; I was scared shitless and I knew it was a girl.
It’s been almost four years to the date without my mother. I am indeed alive and still mothering. It’s messy and my grief is still present. (spoiler: it never actually goes away)
There are two lessons that I have been learning over and over in the years without my mom earth side.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary “Mothering” is defined as “the process of caring for children as their mother or of caring for people in the way that a mother does.” It’s not that I disagree with that definition, but I’d argue that includes ourselves.
I have learned how to mother myself.
There is no replacement for the comfort I received from the hours of phone conversations or snuggling into her shoulder on the couch after a hard day, but I have learned that I can (and need to) give myself the same gifts of care that I give to my children. The process is ongoing, I think. A life lesson.
It started by asking myself what I would say to my mom if she were here; what would I ask her? Over the years this evolved from conversations in my mind to out loud as I verbally processed difficult moments in marriage or my career.
I had to learn how to validate myself and my emotions the way that she did.
I learned to get still and ask myself what I needed. Just as she did for 37 years of my life - providing safety, sustenance, and support. This is not an easy question to sit with and I’m still not comfortable with it. What I learned from that is perhaps I relied too heavily on her comfort without gaining perspective on how to self-soothe in my adult years.
I think she’d be proud of that epiphany.
Much like her; I thoroughly enjoy walking and almost any big, stuck, or heavy moments can be loosened with a walk outside.
Over the last couple of years I’ve worked on acknowledging my own needs. In many ways I may have described her as selfless; she lived for us. That is a great honor and brings deep sadness as I think about all of the dreams of hers that were left unmet.
I love my children and would do anything to protect them; they do not make up my whole identity. I am more than a mother. This personal understanding has brought what I think to be one of the values differences between us to the surface, and that felt scary, made me a bit insecure.
I’ve worked through that and remembered all the times she told me she was in awe of my big ideas, or when she told me she wished her own mother would have pushed her out of her comfort zone.
For me, there is freedom in this act of recognizing my own needs and having them be met, either myself or by asking for help (oh hey, vulnerability, you’re here to stay huh).
I have learned to be authentic in my grief, how I express it, and in how I experience it.
We live in a grief illiterate culture. It’s seen in how folks react (or don’t) to you when you lose someone, in our bereavement policies at work (oh, you lost your person, take all the time you need. See you in 3-5 business days), and the general sense that there is a timeline to “get over” your grief.
I was told when I was pregnant with my daughter, about six months after my mom died, that I needed to “be strong” for my baby. This conversation was brought from concern that my grief would pass on trauma to my unborn child. I was told I needed to heal.
I know now that I am strong; I have been all along. The way I let my tears flow and expressed my emotions (devastated, desperate, sad, lonely, angry to name a few) to my son taught him that feeling your feelings is acceptable. I was not breaking him, I was showing him what it looked like to be human. Perfectly, imperfect.
I use language to describe my emotions. My son knows what the word grief means and he says it out loud. My kids see me cry when I see a hummingbird and I tell them it’s ok to feel sad when we miss our people. Zoey Diana (named after my mom, Diana - now 3 years old) says “I miss grandma too.”
It’s another way that I’m breaking the chain, so to speak, from how my mom did things. When her mother died she shut down. Almost completely. She was a shell of herself for months. Until the levee broke one day on a walk while she was visiting in Seattle. I still remember the way she collapsed into my arms when I said “you just really miss your mom.”
The way her body heaved as she cried, like she finally had permission to grieve.
Now, my son says that to me, “You miss grandma, mom. It’s ok to feel sad. I miss her too.”
What I’ve done in normalizing grief in my family has also increased my children’s ability to practice empathy. I’m really fucking proud of that. That is strong.
My mom lives on in me and through me. She lives on in the memories my son shares of her and in the deep blue ocean of my daughter’s eyes.
I am a motherless daughter, still mothering, still grieving, still breathing.
Wow what a beautiful piece. Thanks for sharing it.
Mandy, we love you and we're sending hugs!