Complicated grief
Thoughts on grieving an abusive parent whom you still love.
In February 2024 my mother passed away. Six months later, I felt able to put into words all that I was feeling. My grief for her was, and remains, complicated. This is what I wrote…
Earlier this year my emotionally abusive mum passed away and as the cliché goes, so did a part of me.
For many years I struggled to understand the relationship I had with my mum. To others, she was charming, funny, open-minded… a joy to be around. At home, it was often a different story. Despite that, I tried for many years to be the ‘best daughter’ I could be. I followed the unsaid rules and apologised anytime I did something ‘wrong’, which seemed to be all the time. I felt her disappointment in me deeply. I carried the shame of not getting it right by her, but I loved her so much.
I prayed for her to be happy. In fact, it was all I ever wished for. I longed to see the version of her that others would experience. I had hoped, and believed, that one day my dreams would come true. One day we would enjoy each other's company, I’d feel her love and she’d be proud of me. There would be no more arguments or dramatic scenes of chaos. I imagined we’d eventually have movie-worthy mum and daughter moments, walking arm in arm on our way to dinner having been out shopping all day.
I also thought a lot about the day she would die. After losing my dad at five-years old, the notion of death was firmly cemented in my psyche. I also understood that my mum was unwell, but I didn’t understand how exactly. For a long time, when I was a child, I lived in fear of her dying. It felt as though it could happen at any moment and I couldn't imagine life without her. When I did allow my mind to explore that possibility, I found myself wondering what foster care would be like.
As time passed and the verbal violence increased, my thoughts on her passing changed. I felt shame in thinking my feelings would encompass more than sadness. I imagined loss accompanied with a relief that the emotional torment had stopped. As I reflect on that thought now, my heart aches intensely with how wrong I was.
The truth is, I have felt devastated, overwhelmed with regret and a longing to be with her. Relief is certainly something I have not felt. Not yet. Shame, guilt and despair have been my friends since she passed.
I’ve looked back on our time together with great heartache, especially when I reflect on the unsaid pain she was living through - both physically and mentally. While that doesn’t justify all I endured as her daughter, I can understand how her own tortured history influenced so much of her as a mother and how her physical health impacted the everyday.
A voice then calls me to remember that many of her hurtful actions were by choice - her choice. Despite incidents out of her control, there was a lot she did control; and just like that I circle between sadness and anger, pain and bewilderment.
Since her death, I have learnt in more detail of her deteriorating health and how much she suffered in the months leading up to her passing. I feel as though I let her down in failing to save her. In failing to be there for her, as I once had, at the time she really needed me.
I’m then firmly reminded by those close to me of the toll that being there for her took on my own physical and mental health. Gaslighting and psychological warfare that left me feeling wounded beyond repair. I then remember the reality of life with her and how she had been unwilling, or perhaps unable, to break the generational patterns of abuse and trauma that thrived within our family. Elements she confessed had been part of her own upbringing and elements she said she didn’t want for her own children.
Despite that, her death leaves me grieving both her physical presence, and the dreams I carried for us. The dream that one day we would both be able to coexist happily and we would both be happy - that dream is never coming true. Accepting that brings a pain that runs so deep that it can, at times, consume my whole body.
While many echoes of the past bring sadness, there were happy times too. Those times however don’t create smiles, I'm instead very aware that those lighter moments were few and far between.
It has been six months since my mum died. Six months where it has felt as though ‘hope’ had died too. I struggle to comprehend that she is no longer here. I can not fathom our story and all its moving parts. My ‘hope’, however, is thankfully starting to reemerge. It’s appears in a new form, without its earlier fixation on my mother’s love and approval. A renewed hope that I can live the life I’ve always wished for and in many ways I already am. I have my own family and a life filled with love and safety. Two things I realised were the foundations of all my childhood prayers. I am brokenhearted that I couldn't experience those with my mum while she was alive; but I am glad that hope has arrived once more. Hope I need to be present for my own children and to keep living. Hope that somehow and someday, my mother wound will feel less excruciating.
Wherever my mum may rest, I still hope she has found internal peace and I still hope she knows that I love her with all my heart.
Thank you for reading,
Chloe x
Thank you so much for sharing, this really resonated and I’m glad to have read it. It really helped
So beautifully and carefully put. Sending love.