The Women Who Loved Us Into Healing
Happy Sunday and Happy Mother’s Day!
Here are some previous blogs related to Mother’s Day:
Undoing Toxic: The Women Who Hold the World Together (click to read)
Beyond the Card: Real Talk About Mother’s Day and Healing (click to read)
Connected in Conflict (click to read)
The Origin of the Mother-Daughter Wound (click to read)
Do We Ever Stop Grieving? (click to read)
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I could not miss writing a new blog about today. Mother’s Day has a way of making us reflective.
For some, the day feels warm and celebratory. For others, it feels tender, complicated, activating, lonely, grief-filled, or emotionally loaded in ways that are difficult to explain out loud. I think what makes this day so emotionally significant is that motherhood exists far beyond biology. It touches identity, attachment, belonging, caregiving, family, expectation, sacrifice, grief, hope, and relationship patterns that often begin long before we have language for them.
And truthfully, not everyone wants to celebrate today.
I think that deserves to be normalized too.
Some people are emotionally exhausted. Some are grieving. Some are estranged from family. Some are navigating painful memories, unresolved conflict, infertility, loss, or disappointment. Some people feel pressured to perform gratitude while quietly carrying years of hurt. Some people simply want the day to pass without pretending they feel something they do not.
There is no “correct” emotional response to Mother’s Day.
You are allowed to feel joy.
You are allowed to feel grief.
You are allowed to feel numbness.
You are allowed to feel conflicted.
You are allowed to opt out of celebration altogether.
This morning, I found myself saying out loud:
“Mother’s Day feels complicated for me because I don’t have kids.”
And as honest as that statement felt, I was reminded of something I think many women need to hear:
Nurturing does not only exist through biological motherhood. That stayed with me.
Because when I look at my life honestly, so much of it has been rooted in care. In showing up. In holding emotional space. In helping people heal. In being present for children in my life. In guiding, protecting, encouraging, listening, supporting, and loving people through difficult moments. I thought about how many women spend their lives mothering others in quiet ways that are rarely acknowledged because it does not fit society’s narrow image of what nurturing is supposed to look like.
And maybe that is part of why Mother’s Day can feel so layered.
Because this day brings many people face-to-face with both what they have experienced and what they imagined.
The Women and Grandmothers Who Raised Communities
As a first-generation Black woman from a Jamaican family, I also think about how much of my understanding of care was shaped through culture and community.
In many cultures, mothering has often extended beyond one individual person. Grandmothers, aunties, elders, church mothers, neighbors, family friends; entire communities often participate in nurturing, correcting, protecting, feeding, guiding, and raising children. Respect for women, elders, and grandmothers runs deeply through many households. So many of us were raised not only by mothers, but by networks of women who stood in the gap when needed.
I think about grandmothers especially today.
The grandmothers who prayed over families.
The grandmothers who cooked for everyone before themselves.
The grandmothers who carried entire generations through survival, migration, sacrifice, poverty, grief, resilience, and love.
The grandmothers who became emotional anchors in families even while carrying their own unspoken pain.
So many women learned nurturing through watching their grandmothers love people consistently and sacrificially.
And at the same time, many of those women also carried survival patterns that shaped how care was expressed. Emotional softness was not always modeled. Vulnerability was not always encouraged. Sometimes love was shown more through provision and sacrifice than emotional attunement.
That complexity matters too.
Because many families carry both deep love and deep wounds simultaneously.
The Imagined Relationship
I think many women begin imagining motherhood long before it ever becomes reality.
Some imagine what kind of mother they will be. Some imagine a close bond with a future daughter or son. Some imagine healing parts of themselves through parenting differently. Some imagine softness, closeness, trust, emotional safety, laughter, friendship, connection.
And yet, years later, many women find themselves sitting in the middle of painful mother-daughter relationships wondering:
How did we get here?
For a relationship imagined long before it is formed, why do so many mothers and daughters still find themselves in conflict?
I think part of the answer lives in attachment, unmet needs, and the difficulty of separation and individuation.
Mother-daughter relationships are uniquely intimate because daughters often first learn themselves through their mothers. Through her responses. Through her regulation or dysregulation. Through what was affirmed, criticized, ignored, or emotionally unsafe. A daughter’s earliest understanding of love, safety, worth, boundaries, femininity, and belonging is often shaped within this relationship.
And because of that closeness, individuation can feel threatening in families where emotional boundaries were never fully developed.
Sometimes a daughter growing into herself is experienced as rejection instead of development.
Sometimes boundaries are interpreted as abandonment.
Sometimes autonomy creates tension in relationships built on enmeshment, control, obligation, or emotional dependency.
Sometimes both mother and daughter are carrying unresolved wounds while simultaneously wanting closeness.
And this is where many relationships become complicated.
Not because love does not exist.
But because love alone does not automatically create emotional health.
Sons, Mothers, and Being Mothered
I also think it is important to acknowledge that conversations about mothering are not limited to daughters. Sons are shaped deeply by how they are mothered, too. The ways boys are comforted, nurtured, emotionally responded to, protected, corrected, encouraged, or emotionally dismissed often influence how they later relate to themselves and to others. Many men move through adulthood carrying unmet emotional needs they were taught to suppress early on. Some learned closeness through overdependence; some learned withdrawal and emotional distance. Some were taught that vulnerability is unsafe. Others are still trying to understand what emotional security even feels like. Mothering influences attachment broadly: it shapes how people experience intimacy, conflict, reassurance, trust, and emotional regulation across relationships. At the core of it, I think many people continue to long for the experience of being emotionally held safely — to feel chosen, protected, understood, comforted, and loved without having to earn it.
The Mother Figures Who Helped Us Heal
And I also want to acknowledge something equally important today:
Many people survived because someone else stepped in and loved them well.
For some, healing did not come through their biological mother. It came through a grandmother. An aunt. A teacher. A mentor. A friend’s mother. A coach. A church mother. A therapist. A supervisor. A neighbor. Someone who offered safety where there had been chaos. Someone who listened gently. Someone who believed them. Someone who nurtured them without control or shame.
Corrective experiences matter.
There are people walking around today because someone helped reintroduce them to care, consistency, tenderness, and emotional safety.
I think about the mother figures who taught people:
your feelings matter
rest is allowed
mistakes do not make you unlovable
boundaries are healthy
conflict does not have to end in abandonment
care can exist without control
Those relationships matter deeply too.
Sometimes healing begins when someone shows you a version of love you had never experienced before.
Grieving Conflict
One of the hardest forms of grief is grieving a relationship with someone who is still alive.
I think many daughters and sons carry grief over the relationship they wish they had with their mother. Grief over conversations that never happened. Grief over emotional closeness that never fully developed. Grief over apologies that may never come. Grief over always feeling misunderstood, unseen, criticized, or emotionally unsafe.
There is something uniquely painful about wanting closeness while simultaneously feeling wounded by the relationship itself.
Many people spend years oscillating between hope and disappointment.
Trying again. Pulling away. Re-engaging. Setting boundaries. Feeling guilty for those boundaries. Wanting connection while protecting themselves emotionally.
That grief deserves language too.
Because sometimes the loss is not physical absence. Sometimes the loss is mourning the relationship you needed but never fully received.
Grieving Mothers Who Have Transitioned
And for those grieving mothers, grandmothers, or mother figures who are no longer here, Mother’s Day can feel incredibly tender.
Grief has a way of revisiting us through ordinary moments. Songs. Smells. Holidays. Recipes. Certain times of day. Certain phrases. Sometimes people grieve beautiful relationships filled with warmth and love. Sometimes people grieve complicated relationships and the finality that death brings to unfinished conversations.
Both experiences are real.
Loss often forces people to hold complexity:
gratitude and pain,
love and resentment,
closeness and hurt,
memories and regrets.
There is no perfect way to grieve a mother.
Some people cry openly.
Some people avoid the day altogether.
Some people laugh while telling stories.
Some people feel numb.
Some people miss the version of their mother they occasionally experienced.
Some people grieve the possibility of what could have been.
Grief does not always arrive neatly.
Carrying On a Legacy
I also think about legacy in moments like this. Not just the legacy of what was said or done, but the legacy of how we learned to love, how we learned to cope, and how we learned to relate. Many of us are carrying forward pieces of our mothers, grandmothers, aunties, and the women who raised us; sometimes intentionally, and sometimes unconsciously. In healing, there is often a quiet decision being made: what do I want to continue, what do I want to soften, and what do I want to break altogether?
Carrying on a legacy does not mean repeating everything that came before us. Sometimes it means honoring the strength, sacrifice, resilience, humor, faith, recipes, sayings, and care we were given, while also choosing to interrupt patterns that caused harm. It can be both gratitude and discernment. Both honoring where we come from and allowing ourselves to evolve beyond it.
There are also many ways we carry and remember those who came before us. For some, it may be lighting a candle, sharing a story, looking through old photos, cooking a meal that holds memory, or offering a prayer or quiet intention in someone’s honor. For others, it may be choosing stillness, opting out of celebration, or allowing emotions to move through without needing to shape them into something neat or performative.
Sometimes legacy looks like continuing what we were taught. Other times it looks like gently rewriting it. And sometimes it is simply saying, “I remember,” in whatever way feels grounding and true. Legacy is not only what we inherit, it is also what we choose to keep, what we choose to release, and what we choose to create as we move forward.
For the Women Standing in the Gap
I also think about the women who spend their lives nurturing others while quietly questioning whether they “count” today: the women without children, the women grieving infertility or pregnancy loss, the aunties helping raise children, the daughters emotionally parenting their families, the women caring for aging parents, the therapists, teachers, social workers, nurses, mentors, godmothers, and caretakers. The women who make people feel emotionally safe. The women who stand in the gap for everyone else. There are so many forms of mothering, and many women have spent years pouring into others while neglecting themselves because they learned their value existed in what they could give. Undoing toxic patterns sometimes means learning that nurturing others should not come at the expense of abandoning yourself. It means recognizing that your worth is not limited to a title. It means allowing yourself to exist outside of constant emotional labor. It means grieving honestly. It means setting boundaries without equating them to betrayal. It means learning that love and individuality can coexist.
Maybe healing begins when we stop forcing family relationships to fit idealized narratives and begin allowing them to be honest. Honest about grief, attachment wounds, unmet needs, resentment, love, longing, and the ways pain is inherited yet withheld from the next generation.
Mother’s Day isn’t simple for everyone. Today, we can acknowledge that complexity without shame — honoring mothers, grandmothers, aunties, children healing, those grieving loss or conflict, people trying to parent differently, those who mother through care and community, and anyone learning to live beyond survival patterns.
Reflection Questions
What did my relationship with my mother teach me about love and emotional safety?
How do attachment wounds show up in my adult relationships?
Who offered me corrective care or emotional safety growing up?
What grief am I still carrying related to motherhood or being mothered?
What would healthier connection and boundaries look like for me now?
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