Healing the Matriarch

Women journeying through life

A Deep Sense of Mother Loss

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It’s been forty years since you left this earth. My mother, the cornerstone of my well-being. I experienced motherhood without you and continued to welcome another generation, our own grandchildren, to the family. You would think by now that the grief would soften yet it manages to surface when I least expect it.

Photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash

Recently my husband’s family paid tribute to his mother and father who have both passed away. Their ashes scattered together in the waves beyond our favourite beach side Christmas gathering place. There is a history of years of connection with their children and grandchildren. Each one able to remember and to cherish particular memories of their Nan and Pop. To feel a sense of connection and love for each other. For my mother-in-law it has also been enough years to welcome great grandchildren into her family fold. To surround herself with her family, the proud matriarch. It was an emotional day for us all.

“As long as there is love there will be grief because grief is love’s natural continuation.”

Heidi Priebe

What the memorial triggered in me is a profound sense of lost opportunity for my own beautiful mum, Eileen. She never had the chance to meet her grandchildren and great grandchildren. To form a relationship or to even hold our children in her arms. There was no chance to create any memories between them. Now another generation of our family exist and they too have never met her.

I feel robbed and saddened by what has been lost from my original family. Little sense of intact relationships, times together and memories shared across multiple generations. It feels so painful I don’t think I will ever truly feel happiness and resolution about it in this lifetime. It just sucks right now.

I feel a keen sense to fill the matriarch void. To do the things my own mother was unable to achieve. Perhaps in a sense to make amends, to right the painful wrongs this circumstance has caused. It’s like a never ending hunger to heal the grief and loss of the previous generations.

I have a powerful longing to maintain relationships and memories with our children and grandchildren. To be honored, cherished and remembered as my mother in law has been. Creating a wealth of family history just like her, gathered over her eighty odd years. I hope I’m blessed to live that long.

It has seemed an impossible situation that we live away from our children and their families. A real second blow to add to my original grief. I have previously tried to sort it out by moving closer to our children and grandchildren. Yet to do that I had to leave my husband behind, a thousand kilometres away. It became messy and complicated. At times I felt like the meat in the middle of a sandwich where the bread stayed suspended in space. Both slices refusing to join me. It became an impossible choice between our marriage and staying closely connected to our family.

There continues to be no cohesion and resolution to my dilemma. I feel I live a nomadic life traversing between my two ‘worlds’. Perhaps forever to feel like the meat clinging to each slice of bread, one slice at a time, while gripping for dear life to stop sliding off. The grasp at times feels so tentative on both sides. I need my husband and children to inch their lives closer together.

I feel a real heaviness and sadness today that my mum, Eileen, never had the opportunity to meet her four grandchildren. To hold them in her arms as babies. To read to them, sing and play. To have heart to heart talks about life with them. That she couldn’t share in the joy and create memories as my sister and I became mothers. We both craved the advice and support only our own mum could give us. Eileen also didn’t get to meet her great grandchildren. What a gift it must be to live long enough to share this extra special joy.

I miss you mum. All the years we were robbed of. All the experiences we were unable to share together. Forever in my heart, even if memories of you become dimmer with the passing years.

If you need support in dealing with mother loss, check out the work of Hope Edelman and in Australia the Motherless Daughters Australia website and peer support group. Both provide invaluable resources and understanding about this journey.

I’m a Recovering ‘Super-Nurturer’.

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Let me start with a bit of backstory. My profession was as an early childhood teacher and alongside that I was a mother to two children. While that seems to be the lot of many women nowadays, juggling work and family responsibilities, when your work is also with children there is an added load. Particularly if those you interact with in your workday are a similar age to your own children.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

The Double Shift

I remember days when I would finish a challenging day of work feeling mentally, physically and emotionally drained. I would walk in the door ready to meet my own children. Each of them understandably wanting my physical attention with cuddles and play. This all happened just as my husband would come home from work and the balancing act of dinner, bath and bedtime routines began.

No wonder the early evening in households, particularly with young children, is called the ‘bewitching hour’. A time of multiple demands and the guilt of not being able to be fully present in the moment due to everyone’s tiredness. Yet the routine would be completed and we would slump down on the living room couch weary and energy depleted. The reality of the double shift that parents around the nation are doing every workday. There are things I wish I knew about parenthood.

“Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.”

Barbara De Angelis

There was very little reprieve when our children were young as we were a transient family with my husband in the military. We had little respite from the role of parents as we didn’t have extended family nearby. I relied on formal care and neighbours for childcare while I worked so I didn’t feel comfortable asking my neighbours to take on additional care of our children during evenings or the weekend. Once they were both at school some of the load of nurturing reduced. The focus turned to before and after school routines, extracurricular activities and play dates. Thankfully at that point my husband changed jobs which gave our family more stability. We also moved closer to my extended family.

Enjoyment of the mother role amid a sense of loss

I enjoyed being a mother. As I look back on it I consider it the most important job I had – raising our children. During that time I took on the lions share of the nurturing responsibilities. With neither my mother nor grandmother alive I only had memories of how they nurtured me to fall back on. Luckily, particularly with my grandmother, I had strong emotional memories from my own childhood to draw upon.

Yet throughout my mothering role I mourned not having their presence for advice. To not have your own mother around to nurture and support you as a mother really hurts. I’m now part of a wonderful organization Motherless Daughters Australia. It has invaluable resources and peer support for those doing life’s journey without their mums.

When the job of parenting was complete I felt a sense of loss. I’d wrapped so much of my own identity around nurturing my own children, and the children of others, that I was unsure of who I was without that role. It took going through a time of grief and depression that I was able to emerge with more clarity around my sense of self and this next stage of life.

What did I learn about motherhood

  • To ask for and create space to rejuvenate from constant nurturing and to just be ‘me’. That during active motherhood I needed to give myself more priority. To allow time to follow my own interests and the things I love doing. To ask for support from others and to expect that I would receive it.
  • To communicate more with my partner so we could jointly come up with solutions that would alleviate some of the nurturing load. As I view the current generation of parents I’m reassured that there is more sharing of responsibilities both outside and inside the home. For previous generations the role models were much more traditional, based on only one person in the workforce while the other stayed at home. The strategies and role expectations needed to evolve once more women entered the workforce.
  • To finally nurture myself. To stop seeing my role as the constant nurturer always available to others. I learnt about establishing healthy boundaries around my expectations of others and what I’d do and wouldn’t do for them. I learnt to feel o.k. if others weren’t happy with this changed status quo and to step back from the need to please people. As a result some relationships evolved, others fell away. That was o.k. I was becoming more authentically me.
  • As I worked on creating boundaries and expectations I also increased my sense of self-worth. Yes I was a nurturer, a role I enjoyed, but I was also much more. Once I could see more facets of who I was my creativity and life satisfaction increased. I became a major advocate for my life decisions and my own preferences and choices.

I think I learnt the hard way. It took the experience and unique circumstances of my journey as a mother to realise that I had placed myself at the bottom of my list of priorities. I’m making up for it big time now. Truly making daily life choices that are authentic to me. Carving up lots of time to continually learn and share experiences with others.

If my journey inspires young mothers to create a sense of balance in their nurturing role I have done my job. For me, I can’t go back and rewrite parts of my motherhood role. It was another time, unique set of life circumstances and relationship dynamics. Most of it was lovely, it taught me so many life lessons along the way. Many of them I will now carry forward into the next chapter of my life.

We Are Made To Adapt

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This morning I was watching a media segment on the war in Ukraine. A brave young Ukrainian soldier was being interviewed while blasts from bomb attacks were happening in the background. He briefly turned toward the action and back to the camera. What he said was truly amazing. “It’s o.k., we humans were made to adapt”. While I’m sure he wouldn’t want to choose the situation he has found himself in, he has given himself a sense of agency. His perspective showed his willingness to process his surroundings and action his body for the coming day.

In essence we are changeable creatures. Susan Willson, a women’s health writer, states that when scientists finally unraveled the human genome sequence they found fewer genes than they expected. They also found that humans haven’t changed dramatically in their make-up since they first appeared on Earth. Far from having a multitude of genes that are instrumental in changes in our body, our fewer genes continually change and adapt to the environment in which we are placed in this world. The process makes each of us a unique product of nature and nurture.

Photo by Beth Macdonald on Unsplash

This has positive ramifications for our ability to learn from experience. While we do come with traits that are wired into our DNA, a larger proportion are malleable through self-awareness and learning. The information we take into our brain, the memories we instill, the emotional residue of our experiences and our sense of self can each evolve over our lifetime. Therefore, negative experiences in the past can be ‘re-framed’ to see a clearer picture. We can learn from life’s lessons and discard thought patterns and beliefs that are no longer personally relevant.

‘You can pull any thread and unravel the universe’

Susan Willson

Learning plays a key role in how we perceive life. Each of us sit somewhere on the optimism: pessimism spectrum of human perspective. Yet the genetic component of this trait is minor. We have opportunities to shift our view of life through conscious awareness of the world around us.

Dr Rick Hanson talks about this process as ‘Taking in the Good’. Looking each day for the positive experiences that are happening in our lives right under our noses. The mundane and ordinary. The comfortable bed, the nourishing meal, the joy of being with the people who love and support us each day. When we notice these things more, with a sense of gratitude and appreciation, we train our mind to continue this quest of finding what’s good about the world we inhabit.

Life will still throw challenges and difficulties our way. How we respond matters, just like the brave young Ukrainian soldier. By widening our view to see both the positive and negative aspects of life it can become more balanced and realistic. We can bring inner resources such as strength, resilience, empathy, skilled assertiveness and a sense of belonging to the situations we find ourselves in.

Appreciate that you have come into this life with your body prepared to adapt to its environment. Some things are uniquely genetically a part of you. Others are malleable and have the ability to change. Each day is an opportunity to shift your perspective on life, making small adjustments in your thoughts and actions. Increasingly noticing positive experiences and using them to gain perspective and grow inner resources to face the inevitable negative experiences of life.

Lifelong Learning

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When you look at a young child or baby engaging with their world you see a role model for learning. They have a natural curiosity even for the smallest and most mundane things. They come equipped with the capacity to learn and much of their learning happens while engrossed in play. It’s a joy to watch children mesmerized by something new, their faces showing intrigue or their bodies filled with energy and at times laughter and delight. We are witnessing them taking in the learning experience fully.

We now know with imaging of the active brain that we continue to learn throughout our lives. Our brain network changes as we interact with the world. Neuroplasticity of the neural network of the brain allows for brain connections to strengthen and alter as each piece of information rapidly passes through. The neurons that fire together, wire together. While some of our ability to learn is encoded in our DNA, a larger portion of our learning is gained from our interactions with the world.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

“Learning is not a spectator sport”

B. F. Samuel

For beneficial changes to occur in our brain we need to be active participants in exploring our world and willing to change our perspective over time. As we learn, we can enhance the connections by doing the following: –

Talking about what we are learning – sharing it with others, hearing different perspectives in order to modify and enrich our own understanding. In educational theory, a slightly more competent child can support the learning of another, ‘scaffolding’ the next step in their understanding. When we discuss our learning with others as adults the potential for scaffolding continues to exist.

Writing about it – gaining clarity and perspective on what we know. Seeing how our thoughts and beliefs change over time. Potentially finding solutions to challenges we are facing by examining our written thoughts.

Applying it to our daily lives – physically ‘doing’ what we are learning to increase competency and skill development. If what we are learning is relevant to us, it becomes both enjoyable and meaningful. We are self- motivated to repeat what we are learning and move toward the satisfaction of mastery.

Relating it to past experiences – Building upon our understanding and knowledge. Seeing patterns from the past in our learning. What has worked and what hasn’t worked. What was relevant in the past but is no longer relevant. This helps us to find new ways of interacting with the world.

Feeling what we are learning fully in our minds and bodies – by using our thoughts, emotional responses and sensory perceptions as we learn. What are our desires and end goals in our learning? What actions will increase our learning? These strategies help us enrich our knowledge and make it part of who we are.

Overcoming the negativity bias in our learning

As humans we have evolved a mental negativity bias. We hold onto the negative past experiences and continue to feel them fully in our mind and body. It is very hard to stop going over all the minute details of a negative experience. Inadvertently, as we ruminate over the past, we strengthen the brain connections that hold particular memories. Replaying the story, embellishing and modifying the version each time. In the end, this allows the negative past view to stick like Velcro in our mind being both expanded and absorbed.

The positive experiences in our lives are harder to grasp onto. While some are major highlights such as holidays and celebrations many are quite mundane and ordinary. We are often surrounded by examples of them around us each and every day. Rather than sticking like Velcro positive experiences tend to be more like the Teflon surface of a pan, easily slipping away.

“The brain is an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one”.

Charles Sherrington

To take in the good things in life requires us to slow down and observe the world around us. Much like a child. Once we can focus our attention to our surroundings its easier to notice and savour an experience. It might be the comfort of our warm bed when we wake up, a delicious breakfast, the sun on our limbs as we walk the neighbourhood, the satisfaction in connecting with others throughout our day.

The first step is to notice the good facts. Make a mental or physical note of examples of the good things happening as you go about your day. Expand the good facts into good experiences by spending as much time as possible savouring them. Engage your thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations to immerse yourself more deeply in a few of the good facts you come across. What is novel and different in what you are observing? How important and relevant is this good fact to your life as a whole? It is not unusual to find a sense of gratitude, contentment and love emerge from the experience.

Regularly focusing on the what’s good in your life helps to shift your focus toward noticing more positive examples. You are reinforcing your perspective on the good in life. There will still be negative experiences and challenges to deal with, but your mind will learn to overcome them with inner resources you have been developing. Having a wider perspective on life will also help you appreciate the balance of positive, neutral and negative experiences you are navigating in your day.

Throughout life we continue to learn. When we take more note of the positive, beneficial experiences we have it supports our own well-being. In the process we build more inner resources to meet the inevitable challenges we face in life. We also develop skills to support others.

April 2026
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