Motherless daughtering 3.5 years on
By Charlea - Friday, February 02, 2018
...or in other words, grieving: almost four years on.
I haven't let this topic surface for a really long time, for so many different reasons. The last three years frankly have been a whirlwind. I've made some of the biggest personal, professional and mental developments of my life yet. Which can totally be expected from someone in their early to mid 20s, but is even more WTF from someone who spent the first part of this important life stage watching their mum die.
And while (for the most part) I'd consider myself to be almost there on the adulting front, the early loss of my mum is something that has never quite caught up with the rest of me.
In other words, I'm more than capable and efficient at all of the following tasks: doing my own laundry, applying for a credit card, changing light bulbs, managing my own council tax, finding and getting a job I want, making time for my boyfriend and friends, planning future puppy/baby names, admitting when I need to have a sick day, making my own pastry from scratch, recognising when I'm feeling low, tracking my macros, saying no to drinking on weeknights, tuning my own TV...
The one I've not quite mastered? Being a motherless daughter.
It's the one that never quite goes away. The one that comes back a lot.
Here's just a small shortlist of some of these times:
- Every Christmas Day since 2014
- Every birthday since 2014
- Every New Year since 2014
- Every Mother's Day since 2014
- Every June 7th since 2014
- The day I got offered my latest (and greatest) job
- The night my now-boyfriend asked me out for the first time
- When I decided to tell my boyfriend I loved him for the first time (in a bloody Zizzi's no less)
- When we first discussed what we'll one day call what would have been her grandchild
- When I moved in with him for a month
- The first time my stomach freaked out in November and I ended up in A&E with crippling pain
- The second and third time my stomach has freaked out since
- Right now, because I'm a bit worried about my stomach
- The last time I saw someone I know texting their mum
- Last night, when I had a tumble drying / jeans related query
- Last week when I needed a second opinion on some trousers I'd bought
- When I moved into my new flat, decorated my room, and felt proud for the first time of where I lived
- When I saw a random blogger's wedding video on YouTube and remembered my mum won't be able to attend mine
- The other week when I couldn't sleep and just wanted a chat
This may sound like an extensive list, but this is extensive honesty. Prematurely losing a parent never goes away, and as a result missing them never really goes. You find ways to build your life around the gaping hole in it. In fact, I spend every single day now pretty happy. I rarely cry. My grief for my mum no longer clouds my judgement, occupies my mind, or takes up too much space.
It's hard to explain really but it's just there. Just kind of sat there, all the time, reminding me every now and then of what I've lost. The void is impossible to fill, and nor should it be filled.
Hope Edelman wrote a book about daughters who lose their mother prematurely:
I'm still trying to navigate my own emotional terrain surrounding my mum's loss, and to be honest I don't think I'll ever really fully figure it out. My life is now mostly accompanied by an ambient grief – the dormant sort that wakes up often (but it takes a pretty good prod now).
Approaching my 25th birthday and navigating another defining life chapter without her guidance often feels a little like I'm walking a tightrope alone, minus the unfaltering encouragement from the crowd and the unfailing safety net that I always had in her.
But I have learned to grow from her legacy. I've learned I'm not isolated, I'm not alone, and I can and will do great things with my life. I talk about her a lot to anyone that will listen (without falling asleep). The support over the last 3.5 years from those closest to me has defied all expectations. My boyfriend has always (unprompted) referred to her in present tense, giving me the comfort that she's still as significant in our relationship as she deserved to have been. He makes an amazing effort to get to know her through me, which is exactly how we've promised we'll raise her grandchildren one day.
Grief is complicated, and I truly believe that in order to get through it you have to be adaptable and accept that it is a fluid process. Sometimes you'll barely notice it at all; other times it will feel overwhelming. Surround yourself with people who understand this. People who will be there when you're the best version of yourself, but who will also understand without question when you're just not feeling like it and you can't explain why.
Move forward. But don't expect yourself to move on. Some days I feel like the spark is as knocked out of me as it was the first day after she died.
But I have finally learned: THAT IS OKAY.
"When a mother dies, a daughter's mourning never completely ends," Edelman wrote. "Motherless women have always intuitively known this."
Daughters who lose their mothers prematurely share certain qualities, she discovered: "A keen sense of isolation, a sharp awareness of our own mortality, ...[and] the strong desire to give our children the kind of mothering we lost or never had."
[extract from full piece here]
I'm still trying to navigate my own emotional terrain surrounding my mum's loss, and to be honest I don't think I'll ever really fully figure it out. My life is now mostly accompanied by an ambient grief – the dormant sort that wakes up often (but it takes a pretty good prod now).
Approaching my 25th birthday and navigating another defining life chapter without her guidance often feels a little like I'm walking a tightrope alone, minus the unfaltering encouragement from the crowd and the unfailing safety net that I always had in her.
But I have learned to grow from her legacy. I've learned I'm not isolated, I'm not alone, and I can and will do great things with my life. I talk about her a lot to anyone that will listen (without falling asleep). The support over the last 3.5 years from those closest to me has defied all expectations. My boyfriend has always (unprompted) referred to her in present tense, giving me the comfort that she's still as significant in our relationship as she deserved to have been. He makes an amazing effort to get to know her through me, which is exactly how we've promised we'll raise her grandchildren one day.
Grief is complicated, and I truly believe that in order to get through it you have to be adaptable and accept that it is a fluid process. Sometimes you'll barely notice it at all; other times it will feel overwhelming. Surround yourself with people who understand this. People who will be there when you're the best version of yourself, but who will also understand without question when you're just not feeling like it and you can't explain why.
Move forward. But don't expect yourself to move on. Some days I feel like the spark is as knocked out of me as it was the first day after she died.
But I have finally learned: THAT IS OKAY.
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