Remembering Mom
and all the other Mothers who have mothered me
My mom passed when I was 30, but she effectively left my life in February during my Junior year of high school when she was hospitalized at the North Dakota State Hospital for the remainder of her life.
My mother's mental illness was our family's secret...we never talked about it. By my teen years, I wore the secret like a scarlet letter.
I've spent my life trying to understand my mother, her mental health challenges, and my relationship with her. It's complicated by the decades that have passed and the regret I have for not viewing her with compassion.
Mother’s Day has always been bittersweet for me. I became a mother to the daughter I always wanted…and my mother passed three months later. She never got to see and hold her granddaughter.
I was motherless on my first Mother’s Day.
Daughters are always hardest on their mothers. When growing up, oftentimes the last thing we want to be, is like our mothers.
I've spent countless hours in thought, writing, and therapy about mother/daughter relationships. I wrote this poem at an Esalen poetry retreat in the late 1990s.
Healing My Mother Wounds
by Deb Sinness
I will never be the mother my daughter needs me to be,
just as my mother was not the mom I thought I needed.
I can only love, protect, and comfort her to the best of my ability
knowing that I'll somehow fall short of her expectations...
and that's okay, because as a daughter my greatest fear
was to become like my mother with her worrisome ways.
Until I became one.
Then I understood with crystal clarity...
She did the best she could.
On this Mother’s Day, I’m grateful to my mother and all the aunts and women in my life who mothered me...including my daughter who took such good care of me after I had bicep/rotator cuff surgery.
I’m also proud of and celebrating my daughter Jes, who is a wonderful mother to our sweet granddaughter.
Mom would be so proud of Jes…and over the moon thrilled about Madi.
Here’s the story about the bicep/rotator cuff surgery:
And the story of my mother’s passing:
What a sweet photo of Madi and Jes! To become motherless at the same time one becomes a mother is certainly bittersweet. And the complications of her mental illness must have been terribly confusing and painful growing up; especially during your teen years. A secret worn like a scarlet letter. Oof.
Beautiful, Deb, and I love your poem! It is so true that we don't want to become our moms and don't realize they did the best they could until we became a mother. It sounds like you have a great relationship with your daughter and granddaughter - how old is she?