Being a Mother—Having a Mother
Love and Ambivalence on Mother’s Day
Dear Estranged,
Mother’s Day is always a challenge. We are mothers, children, and grandchildren, and many of us have observed decades of these Sundays. On a holiday like this, there is often a collision of love and obligation; a sense of both hope and disappointment. Our love for our parents—and our children’s love for us—is likely tinged with ambivalence.
Some of us will send a text or receive a silence. Some will sign an obligatory card—or receive one—containing a sentiment that feels slightly untrue. There are those grieving a parent who is gone, and those missing a child who has simply walked away. Some of us are looking back, wishing we’d had more help growing up, while others are looking at the present, wishing for a closeness that remains out of reach. Because this day highlights a connection that inherently contains ambivalence, it will always be a day of complicated feelings. It is a tricky day.
This letter is from me, today. I want to talk about the dual challenge of being a mother and having a mother. Most mother-child relationships begin in the deepest intimacy possible: one life residing inside another. We move from that total biological union through the profound transition of birth, into the dependency of infancy, and finally into the slow, sometimes wrenching process of individuation.
Our initial bonds are physical—being carried, strapped to a chest, tucked into strollers, then trikes, then bikes, and finally into vehicles, seemingly driving independently away. There is no more intimate relationship in life, and none that requires more demanding flexibility. As the child grows and changes, the mother is pressured to grow with them.
So, the questions I am holding today are these:
How do we love someone who is ever-changing?
How do we master the impossible art of attaching and detaching in turn?
If a child takes space in a way that is painful, how do we work through that grief to ensure we remain well ourselves?
How do we remember that “grief begins with love” (thank you Julia Samuel) when that relationship includes many degrees of separation?
Mother’s Perspective:
Falling and Balancing
We spend decades trying to figure out how much space to take—a lifelong effort to find our center while in motion. In the beginning, the closeness is delicious: warmth without words. But as a child grows, that same proximity can start to feel uncomfortable. The very thing that was once a source of nourishment begins to feel like an interference. For a child to find where they begin and their mother ends, they often feel a visceral need to move away. As Jamaica Kincaid once wrote:
“The love I had for her was a giant thing that could barely fit into the world. And then it became something else—something that made me want to be anywhere else but near her.”
Expect to feel off-balance. The “dance” of motherhood and daughterhood requires us to constantly re-find our center as the relationship—and the people in it—evolve.
Many of you are navigating a painful silence from your own children, yet you are also daughters. Perhaps you sent a card today to your own mother—a woman you love, but whose presence makes you feel stifled or misunderstood. We often find ourselves “performing” closeness while internally feeling a profound ambivalence. We tolerate the discomfort because we feel we should. Sometimes, in order to feel close to our mothers, we have had to give up a piece of ourselves.
When we access our own history of wanting space, we can begin to see our children’s distance not as a failure of our mothering, but as a necessary—albeit painful—expression of their own self-discovery.
Ambivalence as an Expression of Love
As Ocean Vuong writes, the mother is the first horizon a child ever knows, which eventually makes her the first obstacle they must overcome:
“They say a mother is a story that never ends. But for a child, a mother is also the first wall you have to climb over to see the rest of the world.”
When a child begins to pull away, the mother can feel it as a physical sting. I think of a friend who once drove hundreds of miles to visit her mother, only to be met at the door with a sharp: “You don’t want to be here!” The tragedy was that it was true. My friend was holding two conflicting truths: she desired contact with her mother, and she wanted to be anywhere else at the same time. Her mother, feeling that conflict, couldn’t hold her own hurt. She fell to the aggressive side of her pain, landing in anger rather than her love that lay beneath it.
Perhaps the error we make is expecting not to feel complex feelings in these intimate roles. Since they are inevitable, we might have a better Mother’s Day if we expect them—or even embrace them. If the card could say: “I love you, but sometimes I can’t be near you.”
Child’s Perspective:
Reclaiming the Day
Motherhood is the best role you will ever star in, but it is also the hardest. At times, it is the least desirable job in the world because it requires you to embody the very person your child must push away from in order to find themselves. As Cheryl Strayed noted:
“Mothers are the people who love us with a terrifying, unyielding love, and from whom we eventually have to walk away to find ourselves. It is the most beautiful and most brutal thing we do.”
We don’t have to be defined by the card aisle. We can reclaim this day with all of the ambivalent, messy feelings. Whether we observe it with our mothers, our children, or in the quiet space where they used to be, we can honor the growth the relationship offered us.
If your phone is silent today, practice self-care (mother yourself). Appreciate the ways you have loved and been loved. The ways you have held steady—even when you were the door your child needed to step through to find their own home. Remember: grief begins with love. Silence may be a very difficult chapter—not the whole book.
Best Wishes,
Kathy
Please reach out to me at ksinsheimermft@gmail.com or in the “Comments” section.
This is column # 37
