Unmothered: When She Was There, But Couldn't Be What You Needed her to be

There are wounds that don’t show up on the skin. Wounds passed down in silence, in absence, in the quiet places where a mother should have been. Or sometimes, in the space where she was—but only in body, not in presence. Not focused.

I remember the morning I got my period. I was twelve.

The night before, when I wiped and saw a speck of blood, I was sure I was dying. Cancer, I told myself. That had to be it. I was scared but didn’t say anything—like most things back then. By morning, it made sense: my period.

We were living at my grandparents’ house at the time. My mother was staying there too. I walked to the room where she and my stepfather slept on the floor. I knocked gently and whispered, “I got my period.” Without looking up, she said, “There’s a Kotex in the bathroom.” That was it. No conversation. No care. No ceremony. No one explained anything to me—not that day, not the day after, not ever. I didn’t know what to do with a Kotex. But I figured it out—awkwardly, silently. I pieced it together from guesses and, later, from friends who may not have known much more than I did.

That morning didn’t just mark the start of puberty. It marked the start of a lesson I’d carry for years: when something important happens—figure it out alone. Don’t expect to be guided. Don’t expect to be held.

That was the first of many moments when I needed my mother and had nowhere to go.

She had me at sixteen. By nineteen, she was already using drugs. Addiction took her from me long before I had the language to name what was happening. She got clean when I was around twenty—and at that age, I was a mother myself.

I became a mother without ever properly mothered. And that is a particular kind of grief. I was terrified when I found out I was pregnant. Not because I didn’t want to love my child, but because I was afraid I'd ruin it. Afraid I didn't know how to be a mother. I had no model for nurturing. No map for emotional presence. I didn’t know what a "good mother" looked like. But I knew what I didn’t want to become. And even through the fear, I knew—deep in my spirit—I was being tasked with something sacred.

There was a stepmother in my life too. She entered the picture when I was thirteen and did her best. She had no children of her own. And I came with layers—of attitude, survival, and unspoken sorrow. She meant well. But her only language was religion. She gave me Jesus when I needed honesty and transparency. She prayed for me when I needed someone to sit beside me and say, “This is hard, and I see you.” She saw a troubled teen, but I wasn’t troubled—I was trying to feel. Trying to grow. Trying not to drown in the confusion of adolescence without a guide. She thought she was offering direction. What I needed was connection. Now that I’m a mother—and a therapist—I can see it more clearly. I needed someone who didn’t flinch at my emotions. Someone who didn’t try to save me from them or spiritualize them away. I needed someone to witness me fully, not just manage me.

Not every mother wound comes from addiction. Some come from absence. Some from coldness. Some from perfectionism. Some from religion that teaches shame before safety—where you’re given verses when you needed validation, warned about hell when you needed to be held, corrected when you simply needed to be comforted.

And some come from smothering. Mothers who love so loudly they drown out their child’s voice. Mothers who hover and micromanage, who control under the guise of care. Mothers who say, “It’s for your own good,” while teaching their children to question their instincts and mistrust themselves. Because smothering isn’t mothering either. We don’t talk about that enough.

We don’t talk enough about the mothers who gave us everything—meals, clothes, structure, rules—but never gave us emotional safety. The ones who provided shelter but never sat still long enough to see us. The ones who hovered so close we never had a chance to become ourselves.

The truth is: mothering is emotional presence. It's guidance. It's safety. It's repair. It’s knowing when to step in and when to step back. It’s creating room for your child’s voice to rise—not be drowned by your own.

Healing the mother wound doesn’t mean blaming her forever. It means telling the truth. It means saying, this is what I needed and didn’t get. It means holding space for the little girl who cried herself to sleep and the woman who now smiles through the ache. It means learning how to care for ourselves in the ways we were never cared for. And it means breaking cycles without breaking ourselves.

Sometimes the deepest ache isn’t from a mother who left, but from one who was there —without the capacity to love or nurture you the way you needed. It doesn’t mean she didn’t love you. It just means her love didn’t land where you needed it most. And that’s a hard truth to sit with.

We don’t talk enough about the grief of accepting that it may never be what you always hoped for. That sometimes, loving your mother means learning how to let go of the version of her you needed and accepting the version she’s capable of being.

For some, that means creating the best relationship you can with what’s available. For others, it means honoring yourself with space, strong boundaries, or even distance.

People love to say, “But she’s your mother,” or “You only get one,” or “She did her best—you should forgive her.” And maybe some of that is true. But those words can carry guilt, the kind that keeps us quiet and stuck.

The truth is: it takes courage to love yourself enough to make hard decisions. To say, I deserve peace. To prioritize your healing, even if that means disappointing others. To break the cycle—even when your voice trembles. To grow—even if you have to do it far away from the person who gave you life.

That, too, is love. That, too, is sacred. And if no one ever taught you how to mother yourself— let this be your permission to begin.