EPISTLE V: To The Mother-Wound That Still Bleeds
To the child who feels like Mother’s Day is a day of mourning,
not because you didn’t love your mother, but because you could never seem to love her enough to stop the cycle.
I am with you in giving myself permission to express the hidden dread I feel from the cultural pressure of Mother’s Day.
If Mother’s Day feels complicated for you, you are not alone. Some of us are celebrating. Some of us are grieving. Some are estranged. Some are surviving memories no one else saw. Some are learning that forgiveness and boundaries are not enemies. Some of us are still in denial.
I understand what it’s like to love someone mentally ill who keeps harming you. I validate what my heart feels as a daughter while also acknowledging “I know that mental illness can distort people” is a true statement for my mother. I believe that together we can explore grief without performative bitterness, forgiveness that doesn’t excuse abuse, and the ache of longing for a mother you never truly had.
Mother’s Day used to fill me with shame.
First, let me just admit right here that I used to be very triggered and offended by scriptures in the Bible that depicted, portrayed or described anything remotely motherly about God. Why? Because in my feeling memory and trauma experience, “mother” is not a safe word, a safe person or a way I want to view my God. This truly was a hidden experience for me as a daughter, harboring a mother-wound, learning to let God meet me in the ache and pain. Let me validate how complex the journey of discovering how God mothers the abandoned inner-child in me and tends to my daughter-wound. It’s been rough.
For decades, I carried the quiet theology that if I were more patient, more forgiving, more prayerful, more mature, MORE HEALED — maybe the chaos would finally stop hurting so much. Maybe the manipulation would soften or one day cease. Maybe accountability would appear. Maybe I would finally get a mother instead of constantly grieving one who was still alive.
But some of us are not grieving a dead mother.
We are grieving the mother we needed and never truly had. (And probably will never have.)
And when mental illness intertwines with abuse this becomes a violent recipe for even more layers of grief and more disorientation in our complicated relationships with mother. It can become especially complicated if your mother claims to be religious or demands to be forgiven because “God has forgiven me! Why can’t you?” (Insert guilt trip here — no, better yet, don’t.)
Because compassion and damage can coexist, we are able to understand someone’s suffering and still be deeply harmed by them.
You can pray for them and still need distance. You can love someone and finally admit they are not safe for your nervous system, your peace or your healing.
Going NO-CONTACT was not triumphant for me. It felt like attending a funeral no one else could see. But what has surprised me the most is this: I am no longer ashamed!
Sad sometimes? Yes.
Grieving? Absolutely!
Angry in waves? Still.
But ashamed? NO.
Because boundaries are not bitterness. And ending access to ongoing abuse is not a failure of Christian love.
Sometimes wisdom looks less like reconciliation and more like finally believing that God never required you to remain endlessly devoured in the name of honor.
Dear precious child, hear me clearly this Mother’s Day with these gentle encouragements:
you are not evil for needing distance or closure
your grief is not dishonor
your healing may look quiet, private and unspectacular
God sees children who feel emotionally orphaned
Christ is tender toward people carrying family wounds others minimize
you are not mom’s savior — Savior is a title only Jesus can carry
My earnest prayer for every reader carrying both grief and relief is that we would receive the proximity, comfort and rescue of the Lord when this heavy topic tends to consume church spaces and social places that feel devoid of emotional consideration or safety for kids like us.
May we discover that God’s tenderness reaches places earthly motherhood never did. For every child now learning that surviving was never something to be ashamed of.
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18
With grace & solidarity,
Imelda — DUST+GLORY
