Healing and Grieving Mom with Grace: Faulty but Forgiven
Happy Heavenly Mother’s Day
So many posts celebrating mothers on this day. How many people have unresolved hurt in their hearts towards their mom today? Who writes and speaks to them inspiring healing and encouragement?
It has not been a year since Mommy passed away. July 13, 2023, is the date her soul ascended, the day before my 58th birthday. Now we are forever connected differently. And this being the first Mother’s Day without her, it is appropriate and timely to share a few thoughts to inspire and promote healing while grieving.
Death
Naturally, we all will die. Left behind are memories, good and bad, personal items, and lasting legacies. Others have lost their mom and expressed their sorrow on social media and in person. However, there is a sector of society that acknowledges their mothers’ physical absence with silence. Are they healing?
Inside the silence might be sorrow, remorse, resentments, and/or the death of the hope of a relationship that could have been.
Mothers are not perfect. No one is. We know this but rarely talk about it publicly. And how often do we encourage each other to grieve, heal, and forgive?
Instead, society and people have expectations for mothers to nurture, fix meals, soothe booboos, and comfort. Not all mothers do that.
Some mothers are emotionally distant, verbally abusive, physically unsafe, and spiritually dead.
Mourning
How do you mourn an unsafe or absent mom? How can we forgive a mom for what she did not do and what we wish occurred?
Gracefully.
The first sermon I ever preached was titled, “How Do You Treat God’s Grace?” The text was from Jonah who disobeyed God’s direction to preach to his enemies. The gist of the story is that Jonah did not believe his enemies, the Ninevites, deserved God’s forgiveness because of the harm they had inflicted on others.
Jonah had a pity party for himself because God used him to preach a message of salvation and the Ninevites accepted!
But God had spared Jonah’s life from the whale. And that’s what we know God had done in Jonah’s life. What about the other blessings, miracles, protections, and provisions God had given Jonah? Did Jonah think he was the only one deserving of God’s grace despite Jonah’s lifelong patterns of disobedience? He did.
Self-Reflection
And I have received God’s grace and desire to return grace to others. Can you?
My mother was an evangelist, a pastor’s wife, a teacher, a witness of Christ’s power, and emotionally absent from me. She survived a brain tumor, a miscarriage, and, I believe, abuse.
She stopped returning my phone calls about 8 years before she passed away. Maybe because I embarrassed the family or failed, in many ways, to reach the standard of perfection mothers are expected to achieve. The reason is unclear, but one thing is true: My mother and I did not connect the way I wanted. But we did connect.
And she loved me. She did. The way she knew how to love her oldest daughter.
In the rejection of unreturned phone calls and resistance to pursuing recovery for myself, I pondered many thoughts. My goal was to heal.
I learned that my mother was not perfect, but a human with a heart that had been wounded and did not fully heal, in my opinion. Surely, she had been hurt as a child and carried that hurt into adulthood and motherhood. But, she did the best she could.
Mind you, African American women born in 1941 rarely pursue therapy. My sister and I encouraged her to go, but she declined.
Therefore, I had to put focus on what I could change, myself. The Serenity Prayer opened the door for forgiveness, healing, and grace towards her and for our relationship.
And, in forgiving me, I was able to forgive her. And I grieved and mourned her loss long before July 13, 2023.
Set Her Free
My hope is that this post will usher others into gracefully grieving and forgiving their mothers. Whether their “mother” was a foster parent, grandparent, or other caregiver, the truth is many people are raising children from the unhealed inner child. Choosing to let them off the hook does not make our feelings and resentments disappear. But this choice does allow us to be free.
And it takes work to live in this freedom. I encourage you to find a safe space and a safe person to help you pursue the healing you deserve. I did and am a better person for it – thanks to God and my mom.
Be blessed,
Mystic Michelle