🦋 Time Just Stops Sometimes for Motherless Daughters 🦋
I lost my mother at 26 and in the book “Motherless Daughters,” author Hope Edelman breaks down the age at which you lost your mother and the impacts it has at each stage of your life. You are not alone.Some of us don’t have our mothers to give us advice, check-in, cheer us on for life’s precious moments, and be there for challenges and celebrate accomplishments. It is an impact from the moment we lose them. Mother’s Day can be tough in someone’s life.
For some of us, we learn early and quickly how to do all of these things for ourselves. It’s a form of adult self-soothing that’s important to celebrate and grieve life. We can learn to gain immense confidence and become our own cheerleader and support system in a different way than our peers due to this loss, especially if it’s early in life. But we aren’t looking for a substitute Mother in ourselves or in others, but we do often look for friendships and wise women who can show maternal support in a way that heals us. Happy Mother’s Day to these and all women.
Additionally, we start to hear the things our mother shared with us as words of wisdom that begin to sink in deeper. We start to see certain parts of our Mother in ourselves. We learn to take the good of our mothers as well as set boundaries for ourselves on things that we want to heal for our own legacy to not continue the cycle of pain.
If you lost your mother, and you are still struggling, the book I reference above is a fantastic read and was published in 1992. That’s when I lost my mother and a friend recommended it the year it was released. It was a lifeline for me. Loss of your mother can mean many things: death, absences due to addiction or mental health, physical separation, a disability, and much more. This book covers it all.
I will be holding two expressive arts workshops in the summer on loss to show you how you can abstract and the explorative arts can begin to and help heal the pain. 1) Loss of motherhood and 2) loss of a child/children. Please subscribe to my newsletter at this link for the dates.