The Death Of A Mother

I’ve been experiencing writer’s block recently. Which is very unusual for me.

Because writing things out as though I were talking to someone else (yes, you, my beautiful mama) normally helps me to process whichever wound I’m experiencing at the time.

And, as a result, the words come freely and easily.

But my most recent wound felt bigger and more complicated than usual, so I felt a little lost as to where or how I should begin to disentangle it.

For once, the feelings were too big to put into order on The page - I just had to feel them first.

Because a couple of weeks ago my mother died…

It’s not like I was overwhelmed with grief - I wasn’t. That was only part of it.

For I have been grieving the loss of the nurture and safety that I needed that my mother couldn’t and wouldn’t give me for decades now, and relying instead in the unconditional love and support of my trusted inner parent.

It was the shock of feeling so many different and constantly changing emotions that got me.

It felt like I was only just beginning to identify what one might be, before it was swiftly replaced by another - I couldn’t think straight enough to write them out.

Because a few days after her death, I found out - by mistake - that my children and I had effectively been written out of her will just one year earlier, and only a couple of month’s before a planned weekend visit (that had seemed to go beautifully well).

This didn’t cancel out my grief.

It amplified and expanded it into a truly visceral emotional charge that seemed to defy definition:

a waterfall of grief made up by rivulets of shame, betrayal, hurt, hatred, anger, shock, sadness, confusion, love, aloneness, need, pain, disbelief, numbness, compassion and mistrust.

The relationship with my narcissistic mother was never straightforward: from a very young age, I was a parentified daughter whose responsibility it was to support, soothe, counsel, listen to, motivate, cheer up and sort out my mother, regardless of what might be going on in my life.

I was the dumping ground for her unprocessed emotions, her advocate, her friend, her therapist and her fixer.

And yet, despite all of this, I continued to show up for her.

Because, as a daughter, there will always be love for a mother: I feel compassion for the trauma that led her to be who she was, as well as sadness that she chose to behave like she did.

But as an adult and as a mother, I am disappointed and frustrated: that she never got the support that she needed; that she never acknowledged her limitations; that she refused to try to be better.

Now that she is no longer here, I also free free. Free of the guilt that nagged at me whatever I was doing and wherever I was living.

A pervasive guilt over the burden of her suffering. Of the never-ending and impossible need to alleviate it and make her happy.

My words are beginning to come back now. Along with the stirrings of inner peace.

As I accept that the complexity of my dynamic with my mother and the feelings she provoked will always be messy and contradictory.

I’ve had to find a rootedness within the chaos and a peace within the turbulence.

To realise that I am both the eye of the storm as well as the storm itself.

My mother has proven to be the innerwork gift that just keeps on giving - the greatest wound in my life and also the driver behind my professional calling and spiritual purpose.

I may no longer be a part of my mother’s physical legacy but her emotional legacy lives on.

And I’m so grateful for the tools that have enabled me to transform this hurt and brokenness into hope and love.

Love for myself, for inner work and for all those mamas brave enough to choose to be guided by me out of the shadow of their past into the brightness of their present.

I am here for you because I am you.