How Do You Celebrate a Mother Who Hurt You?
For anyone holding grief and love in the same hand this Mother’s Day
Today, I’m holding space for the complicated kind of motherhood. For the mother I had. For the mother I needed. For all the places where those two never quite met.
My mom spent most of my childhood in and out of prison. She battled meth addiction for over forty years. She missed birthdays, school plays, and the year I won a writing contest in fourth grade with a story about a baby fox whose mother disappeared.
She missed my college graduation (so did I because if she couldn’t be there, what was the point?). She missed the moment I landed my dream job, countless heartbreaks, and a million small, shining things I wish she’d been there to witness.
She hurt me.
And still, she loved me. Fiercely, in her own way.
She always encouraged me to be exactly who I was. She indulged every whim, every obsession, every wild phase—driving me to Hot Topic more times than I can count (please tell me I’m not the only one who lived there in high school). She’d take me two hours from the Mojave to the Sunset Strip just to see my favorite bands live, and no matter how late the show ended, she’d be there to pick me up, no questions asked.
She told me I could be anything. Do anything. Dream big. She never made me feel like I had to shrink myself to be loved. Never criticized. Never talked down to me. Only good things from her. Only love. Big, all-encompassing, unfiltered love.
But here’s the truth I’m still learning how to hold…
Even the deepest love can be tangled in chaos. Even fierce devotion doesn’t always mean someone knows how to stay. I had to learn how to love a mother who kept disappearing. I learned to hold joy in one hand and grief in the other.
Having a mom who’s alive but can’t truly mother you is its own kind of heartbreak. There’s a specific ache that comes from loving someone who couldn’t fully show up. A mother who was present but unreachable. A mother whose love was real, but fractured. I’ve felt it in my bones. I still do. This kind of grief doesn’t have a place in the Hallmark aisle. It doesn’t come with roses or brunch reservations. But it’s real. And it’s heavy. And I’m so damn tired.
This Mother’s Day, I’ve struggled to celebrate my mom. Not because I don’t love her, but because I’m so tangled in what I can’t yet process. She went into cardiac arrest again last month. Same as six years ago. She was in a coma. Then, somehow, she woke up. And yes, there’s gratitude. But also suspicion. Fear. And a dark, bone-deep not knowing.
She swears up and down that she’s not using meth again. And I want to believe her. But she swore the same thing last time.
How do I celebrate survival while sitting in this much uncertainty?
All I could do this year was frame two photos—her and my son, taken the week after her coma. She looks vibrant. You’d never know her heart stopped. You’d never know she’s lived through four decades of addiction. I wrapped the pictures in brown paper that my son painted. There wasn’t a card that fit what I wanted to say, so I chose one with watercolor rainbows and let him fill in the blanks.
I didn’t make any big plans for her. Just a quiet visit to my ninety-five-year-old grandmother (her mother) in the dementia care home. Three generations of mothers in one room. Each carrying a different kind of love. Each shaped by a different kind of loss.
I wish I could’ve made brunch reservations somewhere with fresh flowers on the table. I wish I could sit across from my mom at a sunlit café and just talk. I mean really talk, and have her full, undivided attention. No rushing. No chaos. Just presence. I’ll be 39 next month, and I’ve still never had that. She’s always restless. Her leg bouncing under the table. Biting her nails. Eyes scanning the room like she’s already halfway out the door.
Some love doesn’t fit the mold. Some stories aren’t simple.
So today, I’m holding space for all of us who’ve had to mother ourselves. Who’ve had to grieve a mother who’s still living. Who’ve had to set boundaries with the very person we once longed to run to for safety, only to learn that loving them sometimes meant loving from a distance.
I’m holding space for those of us who are breaking cycles in quiet, invisible ways. Who are learning how to show up with tenderness and consistency, not because it was modeled for us, but because we decided it mattered. For those becoming the mother we needed—for ourselves, for our children, for the future we’re still learning how to believe in.
You’re not alone in this. You get to feel it all—rage and sorrow, tenderness and doubt. Longing. God, the longing. You get to tell the truth without softening the edges.
You get to carry the ache and the love in the same hand, and still be whole.
Whether you’ve cut your mother out of your life for your own sanity, your own survival, because it was the kindest thing you could do for yourself, or you’re still in a relationship with her, even through the ache, I see you. You’re not alone. We’re in this together.
What did Mother’s Day stir up for you this year?
Joy, grief, resentment, gratitude, something in between? All of it braided together? I’d love to hear if you feel like sharing.
Here are a few more Mother’s Day reads from the last few years…
A letter—part remembering, part poem—to the woman I was before and after I became a mother.
Maybe Things Could Be Different
A letter—call it a remembering, call it a poem—to myself before and after I became a mother.BEFORE / How you walked through the home goods aisle of a shitty department store in the Mojave and told him you didn’t want kids, you said leave if you want to, I won’t change my mind How you flinched at the sight of a pregnant woman wal…
My dear friend and poet invited me to share a piece on his Substack in honor of Mother’s Day.
For the mothers still waiting to feel like mothers…
Thanks and it resonated. My mom disappeared when I was young, my first memories are in foster care. She came back though and stayed with a fierceness that hurt, overprotective is an understatement. Now that I’m a mother I’ve developed a sense of grace and forgiveness. But there is simply no cure for the heartache of a mother’s absence your lovely and balanced writing reminds me of this.
Thank you for this beautiful meditation on the limitations of mothers and the love that we have for them and they have for us that coexists with the limitastions.