Mother’s Day, Grief, and the Mothers We Carry With Us

Mother’s Day is often portrayed as a joyful celebration filled with flowers, brunches, handmade cards, and family gatherings. For many people, it truly is a beautiful day of connection and gratitude. But for others, Mother’s Day can carry a quiet ache beneath the surface—one filled with grief, complicated memories, longing, or reflection.

In last week’s episode of the Cultivating Calmness Podcast, Kaela Vance, LPCC-S, shared a deeply personal and honest conversation about what Mother’s Day has looked like throughout her life after losing her mother as a child. Rather than offering polished answers or forcing positivity, the episode created space for something many people quietly experience but rarely talk about openly: the complicated emotional reality that can come with this holiday.

Kaela began the episode by acknowledging the many different types of mothers and mother figures that exist:

That simple statement matters because grief and motherhood are rarely one-size-fits-all experiences. Some people celebrate Mother’s Day with joy and closeness. Others spend the day grieving a mother they lost, grieving the relationship they wished they had, grieving infertility, pregnancy loss, estrangement, or the loss of a child. For many, several of those emotions may coexist at the same time.

Throughout the podcast episode, Kaela reflected on what it was like growing up without her mother after her death when Kaela was seven years old. One of the earliest memories she shared was the experience of Mother’s Day activities at school:

It is a heartbreaking but incredibly relatable reflection for many individuals who experienced childhood loss. Grief in childhood often appears differently than it does in adulthood. Children may not always have the language to articulate what they are feeling, but moments like classroom celebrations, holidays, and family traditions can become painful reminders of what is missing.

Yet within that grief, Kaela also described an important truth: motherhood and nurturing are not always limited to biological relationships. She reflected on the people in her life who stepped into supportive, motherly roles over the years:

For individuals with strained, absent, or painful maternal relationships, this perspective can be deeply healing. Sometimes the people who nurture, protect, guide, and emotionally support us are not the people we expected. Scripture reflects this same theme of comfort and nurturing in unexpected places. In Isaiah 66:13, God says:

Comfort and care can come through many relationships, many seasons, and many forms of connection.

One of the most powerful themes throughout the episode was the idea that grief is not only about mourning someone’s death. Sometimes grief is also mourning experiences we never had.

Kaela shared:

This type of grief is often called secondary loss—the grief connected not only to the person who is gone, but to all the future moments, conversations, guidance, and shared experiences that disappeared alongside them.

That grief can become especially noticeable during life transitions. Kaela described how becoming a mother herself brought new layers of reflection and sadness:

Trauma and loss often resurface in new ways during milestones. Becoming a parent, getting married, graduating, or even watching one’s children reach certain ages can reactivate grief that once felt quieter. This does not mean someone is “going backward” in their healing. It simply reflects the reality that grief evolves as we evolve.

The podcast also highlighted an important truth about family grief: even people within the same family experience loss differently. Kaela reflected on how she, her brother, and her sister all responded differently to losing their mother because of their ages, memories, and unique relationships with her:

This is something we often discuss in grief counseling. There is no universally “correct” way to grieve. Some people openly talk about the person they lost. Others avoid those conversations for years. Some people hold tightly to physical reminders and belongings, while others prefer emotional distance. Healing does not follow a straight line, and comparison often creates unnecessary shame during the grieving process.

Toward the end of the episode, Kaela offered one of the most important reminders for individuals navigating difficult emotions around Mother’s Day:

That balance is at the heart of healthy grief work.

Emotional healing is not pretending painful emotions do not exist. It is learning how to acknowledge them honestly, process them safely, and make room for both grief and life to coexist together. Scripture reminds us of this emotional honesty in Romans 12:15:

There is space for celebration and sorrow. There is space for gratitude and grief. There is space for healing while still missing someone deeply.

Mother’s Day can bring joy, sadness, reflection, anger, longing, gratitude, or even numbness. All of those responses are human. All of them deserve compassion rather than judgment.

At Teal Saguaro Wellness, we believe grief deserves space to be processed honestly and gently. Whether someone is grieving a parent, grieving the relationship they wished they had, adjusting to motherhood, or carrying unresolved trauma connected to childhood experiences, healing often begins by allowing those experiences to be acknowledged rather than minimized.

As Kaela shared so beautifully throughout the episode, grief changes over time. It shifts as we grow, as our lives change, and as new seasons bring old emotions back into focus. But healing does not require forgetting. Sometimes healing simply means learning how to carry both love and loss together with compassion for ourselves along the way.