Navigating motherhood without your mother sort of feels like driving through a heavy downpour on the M50 at rush hour. You can kind of see out the window but not clearly enough to know exactly where you should be on the road and when you might need to slow down and stop or go faster. You have driven long enough to know you’re ok but with every loud swish of your wiper your heart jolts and you get the terrifying thought that at any moment you might crash!
Parenting and mothering was not meant to happen in silo. Humans evolved in relationships and in communities where children and babies were everyone’s responsibility and family meant more than DNA. There was wisdom, support, connection and a collective understanding of power and strength in numbers.
Nowadays however so many of us are parenting without out village and without our community. Deep rooted wisdom, intuition, and culture have been replaced with google searches and scrolling, leaving mothers terrified, isolated, and ashamed.
This phenomenon is exacerbated for those of us Mothering without our own Mother. As humans our biology depends on being Mothered. From the moment we are born we are hardwired for connection. Our nervous systems depend on our caregivers attuned and regulated nervous system to support and steady our own. This is the process of co regulation and it does not end in childhood. In the rocky and vulnerable transition through Motherhood our nervous systems crave this kind of soothing and holding, a container in which to practice and test out our own mothering and give to our baby.
My Story of Loss
I lost my mum when my youngest was 1, my second was 3 my oldest was 4. This was a devastating blow and more complicated than I ever could have imagined. In the beginning survival mode set in and I was gifted with a sort of energy and sense of purpose that got me through those early days! Old coping mechanics crept in as I convinced myself I was fine. I busied myself, started a new business and kept going. I went through the usual rituals we all engage in after we lose someone we love. I visited the graveyard, organized family reunions and cried occasionally. But really I was frozen and numb. I wasn’t ready to feel what really needed to be felt, that would mean shattering the fantasy I was holding about the relationship I had with my mother. This tactic worked well until it didn’t.
My grief, when it was ready, showed up initially in the shape of crippling and debilitating anxiety, I was riddled as they say! But I knew anxiety she was my familiar friend so this made sense to my grieving self.
However, what happened next really rocked me to my core. This was an uncontrollable, unrelenting, and fierce anger. It did not start as intense as this though. There was a gradual inclination towards snapping at my kids, frustration towards my husband and extended family and resentment towards my friends. They still had their Mums after all. All of this was veiled for me in the narrative that the world was just shitty and unfair, a sense of hopelessness followed by an urge to run. Then came the eruption. An intense fire in my belly that burned as it made its way up to my throat, coursed my chest with its sharp edges, corkscrewed my throat until the pain hurt so bad that finally tears, really heavy, loaded liquid rolled down my face- wet, warm and soft. This was it I had let go and my body could finally feel.
My brain told me that this feeling was not ok ‘how can you be angry towards someone who is dead’ ‘this is vulgar’ ‘sinister’. I was bewildered.
But I was angry, I was seething that she had left me so soon, that she had abandoned me in my most vulnerable moment, that she had fled and left me with all sorts of mess to clear up. I wanted to scream at her, to let her know that this wasn’t ok!! How should she have been so cruel and insensitive as to get cancer right at the very moment I needed her most.
Anger is an incredibly difficult emotion to feel when we lose someone we love. We have permission at this juncture to feel sadness, grief and pain but somehow even though we know it is ok to feel angry that someone has died, it’s not ok to feel anger towards them.
I’m my work with new parents navigating the transition to Motherhood without a Mother, anger is always there but often well-hidden and disguised. This is the same regardless of whether their mothers died recently or long ago.
Disenfranchised Grief
What is lesser known again is the disenfranchised grief we feel when our Mother is alive but unable to show up for us in the way we had hoped for, in the way we truly needed. This grief and loss are devastating for a new mum akin only to heartbreak.
To add smoke to the fire, another strange phenomenon often occurs as we learn what it is to be a mother ourselves. When our heart aches with pure love and our mama bear instincts are fired up to max. We remember our own experiences of being mothered. Our tender bodies remember what it was like to be birthed and rocked and consoled and we remember what it was like when those cues were missed for us. This unearthing of missed connection, missed bids for affection and attunement can be shattering.
I have learned from my own journey and from working with many new parents, mums in particular, is that healing from loss of a Mother whether because of her death or her ability to offer the mothering you need now is possible. It is not a case of getting over it, moving on or squashing it away, rather it’s about growing through and around your grief. Grief is not structured or linear or predictable. It is messy, chaotic and scary at times.
What Helps
What seems to help as a starting point is compassion. Firstly, compassion not only towards your Mother, but for your Mothers Mother and all the way through your mother line. It is my strong belief that no mother, no matter how cruel holds her new born and thinks I want to hurt and abandon this baby. Unfortunately, the world sometimes has other plans and so many Mothers are not equipped with the capacity to mother effectively because they too did not receive this. We are sadly living in a world that is harder and fierce and people survive according. I support my clients in their own time and in their own way to find some semblances of compassion and love towards their Mother and to wholeheartedly send it to them.
Next is the goal of turning that self-compassion inwards, a task which many Mum’s find hard. Many of us have parts that our critical and harsh and believe that to be loved, accepted, safe and enough we need to push through, override our needs, and strive for perfection. This is a protective part that probably served us well for a time. But now this part can rest, she can set down her tools and take a breath. She does not need to work so hard anymore because she has you now, your adult self that can support, protect, and keep you safe. I tell my clients that if self-compassion was a pill we would all take in every day.
Next and this can be challenging when we do not have a blueprint, is to learn to Mother ourselves.
This is where Matrescence is on our side. As we transition through motherhood our brilliant brains are transforming, pruning away old neural pathways, and creating new ones with the simple goal to keep our baby or child safe and to connect. During such a malleable time for our brain we are in a prime position to make real and lasting changes.
Breaking the cycle of generational trauma is not only about changing how we parent our children. If we employ this tactic alone, we often end up swinging the pendulum entirely and trying to parent completely differently to what we experienced. This tactic is exhausting and misses the opportunity to integrate the good bits of our own experience, the juicy tender bits that makes up part of who we are.
Instead I support my clients to really tend to and nurture the protective parts of themselves. The young parts, the hurt parts, the scared parts. It is only when we embrace this powerful and transformative journey can change and healing emerge. And believe me what emerges is truly spectacular.
If you are mothering without a mother either because your mum has left this earth or because she cannot show up how you need her to, or maybe both. Know that you are not alone, know that your grief is real. The very fact that you are tending to your own needs by reading this and noticing your pain and desire to change means that your journey to breaking the cycle has begun.