Mother’s Day & Ambiguous Grief

When someone dies grief seems very straightforward. But how do you grief someone who is still alive but is absent in many other ways? That’s the ambiguous grief experienced by daughter to mothers who are physically, emotionally or spiritually absent and unable to provide the sense of safety, guidance and nourishment they needed. As we’re nearing Mother’s day grief can come up. Naming ambiguous grief is a vital step in healing the mother wound and help cope with Mother’s day.

It's Mother's Day today and maybe you don't really have a reason to celebrate. Perhaps you're even feeling a familiar pang of sorrow and don't know what to do with it. I'd like to offer you here an opportunity to use this day to grieve and discover the gifts that come with grieving.

I can probably point to three main periods of grief in my life so far. Each one differs significantly in nature, length, depth and many other aspects.

The first, which took me the longest to name and identify, is the ambiguous grief over my mother.

When I experienced the grief of losing first my grandmother and then my grandfather I experienced the loss of my protectors in life. And just three weeks ago, I lost my beloved cat, my sweet furry angle, Fistuk.

When someone dies, grief feels more straightforward—they were here and now they’re gone. But when someone is still alive yet absent in so many ways it’s not so easy to name the loss and the grief.

Naming the kind of grief you’re moving through can be a healing act in itself. Perhaps today of all days it would feel good to acknowledge the invisible heart ache of the mother wound and allow your self to sooth it.

Types of grief

Some people never had such a strong bond with an animal like I had with Fistuk and might not easily relate to the deep sadness and grief that follows the departure of an animal companion. Fortunately, I was surrounded by many people who could acknowledge my loss.

A grief that doesn’t receive public or social acknowledgement is often referred to as disenfranchised grief. When a loss is exiled, we ourselves often don’t credit the loss with the necessary process of grieving.

It is similar to the way we silently or secretly grieve the loss of a mother we’ve never had or the absence of crucial aspects we needed to receive from our mother.

This loss can be even more confusing because it’s hard to reconcile the chasm between the physical existence of a mother with her relational, emotional, spiritual or energetic absence. This kind of grief is known as ambiguous grief

Ambiguous loss was originally coined by Pauline Boss, who identified the specific challenge when people lose their loved ones without clear facts of their absence or without the possibility of closure. Such can be the case with losing people to natural disasters, wars, brain injuries, illnesses such as dementia, addiction, disappearances or kidnappings and more.

Grief over the loss of motherly protection, guidance or safety is an important ally in healing the mother wound. It’s a complex grief with many gates through which we pass as we advance though life, mature into greater parts of our wholeness and acquire different insights into our mother wound and its healing. I simply call it mother wound grief.

Mother wound grief characteristics

Mother wound grief shares a lot with ambiguous grief, yet still pertains unique qualities worth identifying:

1. Mother wound grief is a silent or silenced grief. Not only it’s rarely met with a appreciation or empathy when a woman relays the losses experienced in her relationship with her mother, often she’s met with judgment, rejection, or simply an awkward silence. This silence is the germination of continuous shame which festers in the mother wound.

2. To state the (often overlooked) obvious—each of us has only one mother. Maybe like you, I’ve had many beneficial mother-like figures in my life, but that didn’t change the fact that my birth mother—whom I was innately designed to trust and rely on—was unable to satisfy those significant needs.  This leads to the unremitting attempt to seek an apology or achieve forgiveness as a way of assuaging the loss.

3. Women who’ve had to step into the role of mothering their mother or their siblings often struggle to relinquish this reversed role without first grieving the loss. This leads to the good girl syndrome or a chronic sense of guilt and feeling responsible for your mother’s well being.

If you're interested in getting support for the good girl syndrome, learn why it's difficult to set boundaries and how to change that, I warmly invite you to listen to my interview at Cora's summit: Understanding People Pleasing:

Grieving the mother you’ll never have

Sometimes the grief comes up in a session with a client and I name it. The responses are often strong and sometimes resistant:

“how long can I grieve over this person/loss?!”

“It feels like I’ve been grieving all my life”

“I can’t really complain because my mum was there—gave me shelter and food”.

I understand and empathise with these responses on so many levels.

It took me many years recognise and then acknowledge the fact that the loss of healthy, protective and nourishing mother has been an on going grief in my life which I compensated for in many ways.

It took me just as long to realise the nature of ambiguous grief—the hope that one day you’ll finally get what you needed can keep you locked in grief for yours. But consciously grieving creates a new possibility.

Grieving the mother you’ll never have, in a safe and conscious setting, helps sever the ties from this false hope and disentangle you from the tenacious hold of unhelpful habits such as people pleasing, shame, unworthiness and more.

On Mother’s Day this grief can resurface. Perhaps you can take the opportunity to consciously grieve to receive the gifts of grief.

The gift of grief

Grief is like a great strangeness in our life that only helps us being more fully human. At first, it may feel more like a burden than a gift.

Though each one of the griefs I’ve experienced so far in life were significantly different, I noticed that they all share the same gifts.

I’d like to name those gifts and share them with you because they are immensely empowering in the healing of the mother wound:

1. The urgency to live—grief has a way of highlighting ways in which we can live more fully. In healing the mother wound that often looks like dismantling self-doubt and a sense of unworthiness, getting unstuck and finding a powerful sense of self-confidence.

2. Changing roles—the death of the relationship is also a death of a role, or a space in life we occupied with particular habits, beliefs and rituals pertaining to that role. With the processing of the loss we’re able to realise within ourselves the roles life—rather than circumstances—has in store for us.

In healing the mother wound, this is where breaking free from people pleasing can become possible, as well as healing from depression, anxiety and chronic shame/guilt.

3. Letting go and forgiveness—a common experience adjacent to death or a loss is the mind spin of thinking what we could have done better/differently. When we’re facing this spin with full awareness we see first hand the illusion of control and the reality of uncertainty. In healing the mother wound we’ll navigate here through the deeply seated habits of our nervous system and are able to break free from mother wound limiting beliefs.

4. Clarity—the ambiguity of the mother masks a lot of truths. Mother wound grief helps clear out a lot of question and illuminate the support system you’re yearning to have. This gift helps us deepen into the fulness of our being, deepen into the insights of who we are and strengthen the bind with our life calling.

Mother’s Day & Ambiguous Grief addresses the hidden pain many experience when grieving a mother who is emotionally absent but physically present. This ambiguous grief, often unrecognized and disenfranchised, is central to healing the mother wound. As Mother’s Day approaches, I hope this blog encourages you to name and process this complex loss, lean into the insight the type of grief like ambiguous loss and how grief and healing go hand in hand. By consciously grieving the mother you've never had, you can release people-pleasing, shame, and guilt, and receive the true gifts of grief: clarity, self-worth, and emotional freedom.

If you're looking to connect with a trauma trained, mother wound therapist to accompny you in mother wound grief and heal from people pleasing, I can help. Click the button below to schedule a free call to explore how this could work for you:

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Shelly's helping women who've had a complex relationship with their mother and want to unplack the way it impacts their current life challanges so they can become unlimited personally & professionally