Threads
On the grief of estrangement
February, and the morning is quiet and cold. A bitter wind blows over the fields. All is grey, inside and out. I light a candle and try to write something tender and honest and true - a piece about an unnamed grief, about the loneliness of being an unmothered mother. A place I can go when the words need to spill out.
Grief lands in unexpected places. The other day my 12-year-old daughter, who is a voracious crafter, needed help with a sewing project. I was no use. Without someone patiently showing her what to do in person, she got frustrated and gave up.
A mixture of regret, sadness and faint horror washes over me. My mother never taught me to sew. Not because she wouldn’t have, but because I never took an interest.
My mother is a wonderful seamstress. And I miss her. And missing her is complicated.
No one really talks about the grief of estrangement. Death is a permitted reason to grieve; miscarriage and divorce are now rightly becoming more acknowledged as passages of grief, things we go through that are in need of being named, witnessed, honoured, allowed to move. Things that leave us changed.
But estrangement is still wrapped in taboo, even shame. Dealt with quietly and often in isolation. I’m careful who I tell about it. There is a fear of being percieved as selfish or unforgiving, along with a deep inner insecurity that comes with abandonment. A feeling of being judged as having chosen this, when in the end, it was the only choice I could make. And it was one that broke my heart.
I spiral through layers of grief. I am sad and angry and accepting and safe and then sad all over again. Sad because it needn’t have been this way. Exhausted from being told that it’s my fault. Angry at how she chose to treat me, and scared - terrified, really - that one day I might lose her forever, and it will be too late.
There is little point in telling what happened. Except to say that my mother was good to me when I was a child, but that when I grew into my own life, something changed. The thread between us grew thinner and weaker, worn and corroded by years of hurt.
And one day, the thread snapped.
Sometimes the sadness travels up from the depths and into my throat and eyes and cheeks. Even though I know it needs to be felt, I am scared to let it linger for too long.
Sometimes I want a mum to talk to, to hug when I am sad. To lean on when the mothering is hard. But my mum… I feel like she’s not there. I still have dreams where I am trying to find her.
Solace comes from the land, the sea, the rivers and trees. The arms of my love and the joy of my beautiful children. These are the only things big enough to hold me.
Outside the snowdrops are growing all around the oak tree. There are robins and bluetits and my favourite long-tailed tits flitting around the bird feeders. Soon it will be the planting time, and I’ve been dreaming about what to grow. It’s often the unmothered mothers who are the gardeners, the rewilders, the green witches and the plantswomen. Our hearts know that when we tend to the earth, she mothers us, too.
Forgiveness is a long process rather than a simple choice. In the end I forgive for my own peace, and I forgive myself for my part in it all, too. I wonder if I might be able to mend what is damaged, to reconnect the broken threads; how we might have been able to help each other through all this chaos and fracture instead of being driven apart by it.
For now, I try to make peace with not being at peace. In the end, beyond all blame and forgiveness and longing and grief, there is only love.
I’ve decided to grow more flowers this year. I’ve never had much luck with vegetables in this garden, being as the large trees cast too much shade and suck up all the moisture. When spring arrives I’m going to sew sweetpeas and poppies, sunflowers and nasturtiums, hollyhocks and cosmos, a wild and unruly garden for the bees and birds and insects to shelter in.
Soon all this brown and grey will turn to green. The hedgerows around the edges of the field will be twined with an embroidery of delicate pink briar roses, my mother’s favourite flower.
Thank you for reading
Those of us with a mother-shaped hole in our hearts will resonate so deeply with your description of the grief of estrangement. Actually, my mother's death was a relief - something I feel deep shame for admitting. But it meant she could no longer disappoint me and emotionally neglect me or trigger the sense of abandonment that had followed me since childhood.
your writing strikes a chord, Caroline. i feel the emotions in every word, sentence, paragraph. i thought of my father, and the relationship i could have had with him had we not been so stubborn with each other. he never admitted to wrong doing, and though i forgave him anyway, we never truly connected. he missed out on much of my children's lives. i pray for peace, and wisdom on how to navigate the relationship.