The Mothers We Celebrate, The Mothers We Grieve

In this reflective Mother’s Day episode, Dr. Shemena explores the complicated terrain of mothering, estrangement, grief, and love. Through the lens of the therapy room and her own lived experience, she considers what it means to carry both gratitude and loss, to honor mothers who tried imperfectly, and to make space for those for whom Mother’s Day is tender, quiet, or painful.

This episode is for anyone celebrating, grieving, remembering, or holding a love that has nowhere to go.

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Thank you for listening!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi,

The Stories That Linger

SPEAKER_00 0:02

this is Dr. Shemina, and there's something today I would like to talk about. You know, there are stories I hear in the room that remain with me long after the hour has ended. People come and sit across from me, carrying their lives in pieces, a childhood memory, deep feelings of regret, longing, a wound that has learned to speak another language and manifests itself in love and life. There's always a story beneath the story. And I often find myself wondering not only what happened, but what it interrupted and what it left behind. Some

A Mother And Daughter Estranged

SPEAKER_00 0:49

time ago, I sat with a mother who was estranged from her daughter. She was grieving, not in the loud, kind of often dramatic way that a lot of people sometimes imagine grief, but it was in a very quiet, aching way that she grieved, that just resided in her body. She loved her daughter dearly, and yet love had not been enough to keep them close. That is one of the more painful truths about love. It may be real and still be unable to repair what history has broken. Her story lingered with me and has been for all these years because it awakened something in my own history regarding my own mother. Not from a place of being bitter or from defiance or protesting anything. And also not because I don't really understand that

My Own Mother’s Day Absence

SPEAKER_00 2:00

I there's a lack of understanding of the tenderness of the day. I step around it because I am estranged from my own mother, and there are some absences that you come to bear. And yet I have often spent the day surrounded by mothers on Mother's Day, celebrating other mothers, honoring a lot of women who nurture, protect, provide, and keep things going. You know, I can sit in the presence of celebration and still feel that empty chair. I love what the day means for others, and I also know what it means for me. Mother's Day. Sometimes

Love Carrying Old Family Injuries

SPEAKER_00 5:09

love is there carrying the injuries of everyone who came before it. When I think of my own mother, I do not think of her as just one thing. She is not the only source of pain. She is also the source of many beautiful things that are within me. She was very lively, she's very fun. She had a really wonderful spirit. She gave me parts of myself I cherish still to this day. And also, she was very complicated, hardened in a lot of places, and emotionally immature in ways that left marks. As I grow older as a woman, I can see more than I could before. I can see that my mother had her own heartbreaks, her own disappointments, her own griefs that may have gone unnamed. I can see how unresolved pain can narrow a person's capacity to love. How grief, when it has nowhere to go, can become very sharp. How old wounds can become family traditions, and how a person can give everything they know how to give and still not give what is needed. That truth does not erase the hurt, but it does deepen the bigger picture.

Making Room For Joy And Grief

SPEAKER_00 6:39

So this year I will spend Mother's Day with friends, I will celebrate where I can, and I will find joy and be present. And somewhere inside the day, I will also be thinking of all the mothers out there, the ones who are trying, the ones who are grieving, the ones who carry regret and silence, and the ones who don't who do not know how to repair what has been broken. And I'll also be thinking of the children too, the adult children, the estranged children, the deeply loved children, the ones who are learning how to love themselves in the places where love once failed them. I will also be thinking of close friends for whom this Mother's Day marks a first encounter with the loss and absence of their mothers. Mother's Day may be beautiful for some and unbearable for others. But for many, it's both.