When grief has two shadows

There are loss­es that walk straight toward you, clean and heavy and unmis­tak­able.
And then there are the oth­er ones — the ones that slip side­ways through your life, car­ry­ing a kind of ache that doesn’t announce itself so much as unrav­el you thread by thread.

When my moth­er passed a year ago, February 2025, the grief came in two forms:
the grief for the moth­er I had, and the grief for the moth­er I nev­er got to have.
Both were real. Both were sharp. And both asked me to set down things I had car­ried my whole life.

I was raised in the Appalachian foothills where the land remem­bers every­thing — where the moun­tains keep secrets longer than any fam­i­ly ever could. Those hills watched me grow up in a home stitched with both love and long­ing. They watched me learn that some­times the peo­ple who shape us most are the ones we can’t quite reach no mat­ter how far we stretch.

The kind of mothering that comes from wounded women

My moth­er was a woman who did the best she could with what she had — and what she had wasn’t much. She inher­it­ed her own wounds the way some folks inher­it quilts or cast-iron pans. Passed down, expect­ed, unquestioned.

She loved me, but there were hard edges to her love — edges shaped by her upbring­ing, her trau­ma, her own unhealed parts.

There were days when she was warm, fun­ny, atten­tive in her own way.
And then there were days when she seemed miles away even if she was right beside me.

Some morn­ings, before the sun even cleared the ridge, I picked up the phone and called her. Every day, with­out fail. Our “cof­fee time,” we called it.

It wasn’t deep con­ver­sa­tion — noth­ing too raw, noth­ing that risked stir­ring old wounds — but it was ours. A sim­ple rit­u­al that helped us both start the day. A famil­iar rhythm in a rela­tion­ship that was often uneven.

Even when things were strained between us, we still had that.
That steady morn­ing call.
That small anchor in the shift­ing tide of our mother–daughter story.

After she died, I kept catch­ing myself reach­ing for the phone out of habit — thumb hov­er­ing over her name, heart still liv­ing in the old rou­tine. I’d wake up expect­ing the com­fort of that shared moment, only to find the qui­et wait­ing for me instead.

The absence of that call felt strange — too big, too hol­low.
It wasn’t just the grief of los­ing her.
It was the grief of los­ing the rit­u­al that held us together.

And in some qui­et, intu­itive way, I think my sis­ter knows that.
Most days now, she calls me on her morn­ing break from work.
Just to check in. Just to talk. Just to hear anoth­er voice start­ing the day.

That call doesn’t replace what was lost, but it does soft­en the emp­ty space.
It’s becom­ing our new rou­tine, our new con­stant — a new thread where the old one broke.

Hope is its own kind of burden

People talk about grief.
They don’t talk near­ly enough about the hope that dies with someone.

For years I held onto a qui­et, stub­born belief that one day my moth­er and I would find our way to each oth­er. That some­day, after I’d done enough of my own heal­ing work, after I soft­ened the old wounds inside me, after she soft­ened too — we could meet in a place where love didn’t hurt so much.

But hope car­ried its own weight.
I kept it tucked in my chest like a stone.
It shaped the way I spoke to her, the way I stayed close even when it was painful.

When she took her last breath, that hope died too.
And it left a dif­fer­ent kind of grief in its place — a grief for the con­ver­sa­tion we nev­er had, the apol­o­gy that nev­er came, the ver­sion of her that heal­ing might have brought for­ward if she’d only had time.

Some peo­ple lose their moth­er.
Others lose their moth­er and the future they had prayed for.

The holy work of healing the generational wound

Appalachian fam­i­lies are oceans under­neath moun­tains.
There are things that run deep and unseen — cur­rents you learn not to fight, silence you learn not to disturb.

I grew up in a land where peo­ple believed in God, ghosts, and the pow­er of keep­ing your busi­ness to your­self. Healing was some­thing whis­pered or saved for the next life. Women espe­cial­ly car­ried more than their share — grief, sick­ness, anger, secrets, unmet longing.

When I became a moth­er myself — when I held my own son and felt the weight of what I nev­er want­ed him to car­ry — I start­ed the long, sacred work of heal­ing what my moth­er could not.

That’s its own kind of the­ol­o­gy, real­ly.
A bone-deep belief that the soul is not meant to repeat what has wound­ed it.
A know­ing that break­ing gen­er­a­tional pat­terns is holy work.
A trust that some­times sal­va­tion looks like learn­ing how to moth­er yourself.

And as I dug into that heal­ing — ther­a­py, reflec­tion, read­ing, prayer, walk­ing the land, tend­ing to the lit­tle-girl ver­sion of myself — I hoped my moth­er would meet me there.
She didn’t.
Or maybe she couldn’t.

Either way, that hope was mine to hold, and mine to bury.

Grieving the real and the imagined

Grief for a com­pli­cat­ed par­ent is a strange com­pan­ion. It doesn’t arrive clean. It doesn’t fit neat­ly inside sym­pa­thy cards or casseroles deliv­ered to your front porch.

It shows up in con­tra­dic­tions:
I miss her.
I’m angry with her.
I wish things could have been dif­fer­ent.
I wish she had fought hard­er to heal her­self.
I wish I could call her.
I don’t know what I’d even say.

When she died, I found myself griev­ing the moth­er I had and the moth­er I nev­er met.

I missed her voice, the way she said my name, the sil­ly way she’d tell a sto­ry, the rhythm of our morn­ing calls.

And I mourned the soft­ness we nev­er shared, the apolo­gies we nev­er exchanged, the deep con­ver­sa­tions we nev­er had.

Sometimes I won­der if she knew I was try­ing.
Sometimes I won­der if she was try­ing too, in her own way, and I just couldn’t see it.

Where the land meets grief

I don’t know how peo­ple grieve with­out a place to rest their sor­row.
I took mine to the hills.

There’s some­thing about the moun­tain air — thin, old, watch­ful — that makes grief eas­i­er to hold.
The land doesn’t ask you to explain your­self.
It doesn’t ask you to jus­ti­fy your hurt or pre­tend you’re OK.

I walked famil­iar paths after her death.
I sat beside creeks I grew up lis­ten­ing to.
I pressed my palms to stones warmed by the sun.

And I felt the land listening.

Appalachian peo­ple know that the earth is a com­pan­ion in our suf­fer­ing.
It absorbs what we can’t say out loud.
It stead­ies the hand that trem­bles.
It reminds us that every­thing dies, and every­thing returns, and every­thing changes form, but noth­ing dis­ap­pears completely.

I like to believe my mother’s soft­er parts returned to the land the moment she left this world.
I like to believe she final­ly laid her own bur­dens down.
Maybe she final­ly found the heal­ing she couldn’t reach here.

What healing looks like now

Healing after los­ing a com­pli­cat­ed par­ent is less about the rela­tion­ship itself and more about tend­ing to what the rela­tion­ship left behind.

Now the work is qui­eter.
More inter­nal.
More ances­tral.

I am learn­ing to bless what was good.
Name what was harm­ful.
Release what was nev­er mine.
Hold sacred what I was able to cre­ate in spite of it all.

Some days I still reach for the phone.
Some days I cry for the girl I was, not the woman I’ve become.
Some days I feel lighter than I’ve ever felt.

This too is healing.

To those who grieve someone they had a hard time loving

Your grief is not less real because your rela­tion­ship was com­pli­cat­ed.
Your anger doesn’t can­cel your love.
Your long­ing doesn’t erase your hurt.
You are allowed to hold all of it with­out choos­ing sides.

You can hon­or the good and tell the truth about the bad.
You can be grate­ful for what she gave and grieve what she with­held.
You can love her and still nev­er want to be like her.

Both things can be true.
Both things are true.

An Appalachian benediction for the motherless and the still-healing

May the moun­tains take the weight you’ve car­ried too long.
May the hollers echo back the name you’re becom­ing.
May the creeks teach you to let go with­out for­get­ting.
May the wind remind you that breath is prayer.
May the soil hold the sto­ries you’re not ready to release.
May your mother’s mem­o­ry set­tle into what is true—not more, not less.
And may the path ahead be soft­er on your feet
than the one that brought you here.

You are heal­ing.
You are whole.
And you are free to write a dif­fer­ent story.