I'm not going to tell you to look on the bright side today.
I'm not going to remind you that everything happens for a reason, or that time heals all wounds, or that someone somewhere has it worse. All of those things may be true in their own way and their own time, but that is not what today is for. Today is for something harder and more important than silver linings.
Today is for letting yourself grieve.
We need to talk about a kind of loss that doesn't get nearly enough acknowledgment. It doesn't have a funeral. Nobody sends flowers for it. There's no casserole on the doorstep, no card in the mailbox, no socially sanctioned period of mourning where people check on you and speak softly and give you permission to fall apart.
I'm talking about the grief of the mother you didn't have.
And before you say it — yes, this applies even if she's still alive. Maybe especially if she's still alive. Because there is a particular kind of heartbreak that comes with mourning a relationship that exists on paper but never quite showed up in real life. When the person is there but the presence isn't. When you can pick up the phone and dial the number but the call never quite fills the hole. When you keep hoping that this time will be different and it isn't, and you have to grieve that too, quietly, without anyone fully understanding why you're sad about someone who is technically fine.
That grief is real. It is valid. And it deserves to be honored just as much as any other kind of loss.
I also want to talk to the ones who lost their mothers and found that grief was complicated.
Because we are told a very specific story about how we're supposed to grieve a mother. It's supposed to be clean and devastating and full of beautiful memories. People expect you to miss her simply and completely, and they say things like she's at peace now and she'll always be with you and they mean it kindly, they truly do.
But sometimes the grief isn't clean. Sometimes you're grieving the mother she was and the mother she wasn't in equal measure. Sometimes you're standing at a graveside feeling things you don't have words for — loss and relief and guilt about the relief and anger and love all tangled up together in a way that doesn't fit neatly into any of the sympathy cards.
That grief is real too. All of it. Even the parts that feel ugly or wrong or like you should be ashamed of them.
You don't have to be ashamed of them. Not here.
Here's something I want you to understand about grief that nobody tells you.
Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is not a phase to push through as quickly as possible so you can get back to being functional and fine. It is not a sign of weakness or instability or being stuck.
Grief is love with nowhere to go.
It is the evidence of how deeply you felt, how much you needed, how human and tender and real you are underneath all the armor you've learned to wear. When you cry for the mother you lost or the mother you never had, you are not falling apart. You are acknowledging something true — that you needed love, that love mattered, that its absence or its loss left a mark.
That mark is not shameful. It is sacred.
So here is my very simple instruction for today, and I mean it with everything I have.
If you need to cry, cry.
Not later. Not when you've earned it or when things are bad enough to justify it or when you're safely alone in the car where nobody can see you. Right now, if it's there. Let it come. Ugly crying, quiet crying, the kind that sneaks up on you in the middle of a perfectly ordinary Tuesday for no apparent reason — all of it is welcome. All of it is allowed.
And while you do, I want you to imagine me right here next to you. Not trying to fix it. Not telling you to calm down or look on the bright side or think about how much worse it could be. Just sitting with you. Hand on your back. Completely unbothered by your tears because your tears do not scare me and your pain does not inconvenience me.
You are not too much to sit with. You never were.
I'll stay as long as you need.
And when you're ready — not before, but when you're ready — we'll get up together. We'll get a glass of water and wash our faces and take a breath. And we'll keep going, because that's what we do.
But first, we sit. First, we feel it.
You've been holding this for long enough. You're allowed to put it down for a minute.
I've got you.
Love, Mom 🧡
