Healing the Matriarch

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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.

Give me Peace

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Three of our basic needs in this life are safety, life satisfaction and connection (Dr Rick Hanson, Foundations of Well-Being). Our need for safety is the most important as it has a long evolutionary history that pre-dates us as humans. It also becomes our default if it is not being met. Not much else counts until we can feel a level of safety, comfort and inner peace in our lives.

Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash

The ‘safety’ structures of the brain sit the closest to its base and our spinal cord. This gives the safety system a freeway like, basically automated, passage to transfer signals between our brain and body. It’s a strong connection. We have all felt at some time the tingling sensations of fear, the pang of a broken heart or the churning of a nervous stomach.

Our brain is continually scanning for threats. Many of them so subtle and unconscious that we are unaware that we are both giving them off to others or receiving them internally ourselves. Our sense of danger in the modern world often comes from social cues such as indifference, criticism, rejection or disrespect. We pick up the subtle, or not so subtle, body language and tone of voice of others and make quick interpretations of what we believe is true. As a result, we continually build up impressions of others, favorable and unfavorable, that influence our ability for love and connection – another of our basic needs.

I have recently had the uncomfortable situation of triggering strong emotions in someone else. While I felt I was going about my day as normally as possible I kept looking for cues that this obviously distressed person needed my support. I was feeling uncomfortable and out of my depth and in response mistakenly distanced myself from them. They interpreted my behaviour as indifference and uncaring. I am not surprised going over the day’s happenings. I was functioning in my own world, as we all often are, quite oblivious to the needs of others.

Yet for this person the inner turmoil was also brewing as inner anger. All they needed was my physical touch as a hug or a listening ear to hear their distress. Something I failed to see and more importantly failed to respond to before it escalated. We have since talked and I’ve apologised.

“We believe that our thoughts and emotions are reasonable responses to some solid outside reality. Lesson number one is that there’s no unified, single reality out there.”

Ruby Wax – A Mindfulness Guide for Survival

Due to the subtlety of our influence on others we are going to continually, in at least minor ways, trigger them. We’ll get interactions wrong and cause them to feel uncomfortable and unsafe around us. It is the challenge of being human. We are all unique, so what we think, feel and react to will also be unique.

Is there ways you can feel safer and help others feel safer in your presence?

Communication is key: –

Recognising that you are feeling triggered is a signal to explore and express your feelings. For some people this is possible in the moment. For others, who need time to process the inner sensations and find the words to express themselves, it may take longer. Always keep the conversation open if the hurt is still present.

Try to refer to how you are feeling using ‘I’ statements. Take pauses where needed and allow silence for each person to process what has been said. Practice really listening to the other person’s words and body language rather than focusing on what you plan to say next. Avoid shaming or blaming the other person. It is likely they have little awareness of the effect their actions have had on you.

Practice Self Care: –

When triggered by others or even digesting the impact of hurting others continue to look after yourself. Give yourself loving kindness for any emotions that arise. Know that being human is difficult and we are all capable of being hurt and hurting others.  Retreat if you need to and look for healthy ways to soothe, nurture and calm your mind and body.

Express Your emotions: –

Everyone is different. Some need to talk to other people to make sense of their inner thoughts and sensations. Others prefer to write things down. One method to use is writing free flowing words, straight from your head onto a piece of paper. Even if they seem to make no sense, they are better out of your head and external to your body. Burning or tearing up the paper is a helpful and cathartic action if you don’t want to be constantly reminded of what you’ve written. If you receive hurtful words from others you are allowed to acknowledge and dispose of them in the same ways as those you write to yourself.

Emotions can also be expressed and released by body movement and voice. Actively shifting body energy through moving is healing. Humming and singing relieves stress and even yelling into the open spaces is powerful and cathartic for releasing anger safely.

Create healthy boundaries: –

Sometimes the kindest way to deal with emotional triggers is to maintain a distance. It may be temporary or you may decide to move away from the relationship all together for your own mental health and well-being. If relationships are to be maintained and thrive respect and clear expectations are important. They are key to sustaining healthy ongoing connections with others.

As a baby, the ‘vehicle’ or means of helping us feel safe is our primary caregiver. Usually that is our parents. We are relying on them to supply all of our basic needs. The older we get the more we experience life and find our own inner resources to deal with situations that trigger our need for safety. In a sense we become responsible for finding our own inner peace.

We will never get it perfect either for ourselves or in our relationships with others. In accepting this, realizing that we are each doing the best we can at the time, we go a long way to achieving that peace.

June 2025
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