05/07/2026
Grief doesn’t have an imaginary “deadline” where you “should” be over it.
The nature of grief is long, short, messy, simple, calm, and agonizing all at once.
Contradiction is a part of the experience. It moves in spirals. Revisiting the same places, but each time you’re a slightly different version of you.
And when we talk about grief, we often think of death. But there is another kind that doesn’t always get named out loud.
Grief for the mother you had (or didn’t have).
Grief for the mother you kept hoping she might still become.
For some people, that grief is loud and obvious. There was harm, volatility, rejection, emotional neglect. For others, it’s quieter and harder to name: a sense of emotional distance, of never quite feeling met, seen, or soothed.
You can love your mother and still grieve what you didn’t receive from her.
Both can be true. There’s the contradiction again!
If this resonates, I hosted a FREE live Mother Wound training yesterday where I talked about how these early relational imprints still shape adult dynamics, and how to start shifting them (without bypassing your experience).
To get the recording sent straight to your inbox for free, click the link in my bio or go to terricole.com/mothertalk to download it!
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