The Ache of Mother’s Day Without a Mother

On longing, loss, and the quiet courage of doing it differently.

This one is deeply personal. It’s vulnerable to share, but I know I’m not the only one who walks through Mother’s Day carrying both love and grief.

I wrote this for the daughters who mother without ever really being mothered themselves. For the ones breaking generational cycles with no guidebook. For the women who may have mothers still living… but absent.

This is the ache of being unmothered, and the strength it takes to forge a new path anyway.

If Mother’s Day is complicated for you too, I hope this helps you feel seen.

I have been feeling the grief of not having a mother this Mother's Day. As I had a hard day this week and carried it in the pain in my body and stress in my mind, I ached for a mom to call. Not someone else's mom, not a mother figure, MY mom.

I long for a mother who knows me at a soul-deep level, not someone who's known me for 5 or 10 or 15 years, but someone who has known me for every moment of my life. A mother who doesn’t interpret my reactions based on an experience of me, but responds to me in the way only a mother can— with instinctive, sacrificial love.

A response out of a pure mother’s heart, not a reaction based on a short-term view of my character. Because she KNOWS me like few others do. She knows the quirks, why _____ bothers me. There is history there, a witness to my development; who I was, and who I have become. The mom that I hope to be to my adult children someday.

I have functioned without my mother my entire life. Sure, I had a caregiver. One who had issues aplenty and often made me out to be the cause of them… I have not experienced a mother. I have not had a mom to instruct me on homemaking or the best way to get a stain out.

No one to guide me in dating. No wisdom when I got married. No support or encouragement postpartum. No soup brought to me on sick days, no phone calls when I need wisdom. And, often, that's just reality. It's the norm of my day-to-day, it’s all I know. It's not burdensome when you're just living and making it!

But then you have the really bad day. The scary news. The exciting moment. And the ache knocks at your heart again.

You see friends complain about their overbearing mom or the mom that does XYZ and your heart squeezes in on itself to bite back the bitterness, because at least they have SOMETHING. You have no one, and haven’t for a very long time.

This is the wreckage of addiction, sin, and untreated mental illness. It doesn’t just break, it erodes. It fractures everything until what was meant to be whole finally collapses. Families were never supposed to be this way—fractured, unsafe, estranged. But for so many of us, this is the painful norm. It is unfortunately common.

We know how to grieve with those who’ve lost their mothers. We rally around the women who’ve lost babies. But what about those of us whose mothers are still alive... just never really showed up? The addict mom. The abusive mom. The negligent and emotionally absent one. The mom who stayed in cycles of pain and passed them on. The moms who never healed, and so continued the harm. It's uncomfortable and awkward and people simply don’t know how to respond.

Well-intentioned words often follow… “At least your mom didn’t die,” or “Maybe God will heal the relationship someday,” or “At least you have a great mother-in-law.”

While meant to comfort, they don’t land. They don’t fill the crater left by the absence of the one person who was supposed to be there. A mother-in-law isn’t your mother! And please hear me—I am incredibly blessed by mine. She is a gift, and she loves me so well.

But she raised my husband. She saw his first steps, wrapped his childhood gifts, kissed his scraped knees, and tucked him in at night. She was that mom… for him. And what a beautiful thing that is! She fills her role with grace and love, but she wasn’t meant to replace. No one can rewrite the history I never had.

The hopeful comments offered of future healing don’t ease the ache today. They don’t acknowledge the wreckage or the cost. They just cannot grasp what they don’t know, because short of a miracle, that healing isn’t coming.

Not without a complete transformation in her heart, and a miracle in mine. Pride would have to be swallowed, truth told, and apologies made—and honestly, the sun may darken before that ever happens. While I believe reconciliation is beautiful and deeply Kingdom, the reality is that some people choose self-protection over repentance.

Their vices matter more than restoration.

There’s no easy way to tidy that up in a neat bow and short sentence to explain to the well-intentioned commenters.

So when someone offers a well-meaning comment about future healing or finding a mother figure, I wish they understood…

Breaking generational cycles is holy work, but it’s brutal. It’s exhausting to try and mother well when you’ve never seen it modeled. When you're doing it all alone, without the safety net of generational wisdom passed down, without the legacy of love that should have paved the way. It’s lonely, and no amount of kind advice can fill the ache for the mother who was meant to be there.

This Mother’s Day, I sit with both heartbreak and fury.

My rage burns forward in a tunnel of fire, not directed at any solitary person, but back in time to every generation before me who chose selfishness and substance over the people in front of them.

As I turn to face the generations of mothers before me, I shield the daughters behind me. It ends here, but oh how it hurts to take the brunt of it.

I want to scream into the void "why couldn't you choose me for once?" And so Little Me crouches at my feet and I do it for her.

She was never allowed to voice her feelings, but I can now.

Why couldn’t you love me?
Why couldn’t you choose kindness?
Why didn’t you try?

Oh, how I wish my mother could sit beside me today. Even imperfect. Even flawed. Even if she didn’t always get it right. I wish I had a lifetime of memories, recipes shared, hugs offered, safety created. Mistakes made right instead of eroded into canyons.

I wish she could have been the mother I’m working so hard to become.

The one who could have been if ________ hadn't gotten in the way.

So here I stand, in the tension of it all: In the fierce love I have for my own children, and the quiet mourning of the child I once was. Where the utter gratitude I feel for this life I get to lead greets the weary little girl inside who just wanted to be fought for. Here, my adoration of my motherhood shoulders up to the grief that surely will follow me on and off as this life continues on.

I can see it stirring at the next sickness that takes me out, at the next milestone my children meet, and at the birth of my grandchildren.

And yet, even in the absence, we rise.

We stand in kitchens they never stood in. We fold laundry with music playing instead of harsh words. We offer hugs instead of cold shoulders. We learn as we go, mothering by prayer and instinct, choosing gentleness where there was once silence or shame.

We are forging a new path.

No map was handed to us. No generational blueprint. Just a longing —a holy ache— to do it differently. To build homes full of warmth and safety. To be the kind of mother we once needed. To show our children that the cycle can end here, and something beautiful can begin.

To every woman who is homemaking and raising children without a mother to call, without guidance passed down, without the safety net others may take for granted — I see you. It’s not easy. But it is sacred.

You’re not failing because it’s hard. It’s hard because you’re doing something brave.
And the beauty you’re building? It matters more than you know.

You are the turning point.
You are the legacy changer.
And you are not alone.

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Today, I wish I had a mother. Mine. My own. If Mother’s Day feels like this for you too, if the celebration is split down the middle with both joy and ache, I wish I could hug you right now.

You are not alone.

A blessing for the mother forging a new way:

May your hands be strengthened for the holy work of rebuilding.
May your heart remain tender, even as it carries grief.
May peace find you in the quiet corners of your home.
And may you never forget—
You are the good that is growing from the ashes.

“They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor.”
—Isaiah 61:3