There is no substitute for a mother’s love, and I have learned to set aside the ache of longing and the weight of what was lost to offer the kind of emotional connection I was never given.

This journey requires deep work, patience, time, and the unraveling of decades-old patterns and beliefs.

It means unlearning how I coped in the absence of love and re-learning how to be present, how to live, and trust again, even when it feels vulnerable.

There is no substitute for a mother’s love. I still can’t fully grasp the extent of its absence, but I’ve witnessed its imprint in every corner of my life.

Her loss has shaped my marriages and my parenting. The way I related to men and the way I raised my daughter were profoundly shaped by what I didn’t have.

I know I am not the same woman, wife, or mother I might have been if I had known the steady, unconditional love of a mother. I have no inner blueprint for the kind of love and encouragement a mother offers. That space in my heart remains unfilled. Without it, I stumbled through marriage and motherhood, often feeling like I was failing. I overcompensated in ways that sometimes caused more harm than good, always wondering if I was enough for my partner, for my daughter, for myself.

I’ve questioned myself endlessly over the years. I never felt grounded in confidence as a wife or as a mother.

What I longed for most was my mother’s voice—her steady reassurance, the kind of simple, heartfelt affirmation I imagine she would have given me so easily.

Words like, “You’re doing a good job, Doretta.”

My heart sinks as I type these simple words: You’re doing a good job, Doretta.

They stir a longing so deep, it takes my breath away—a yearning to be seen, to be truly known, by the one voice that will never speak them.

My heart aches with the weight of what will never be.

Some wounds do not heal; they become part of who we are.

It’s astonishing how her absence has shaped every layer and season of my life, each in its own way, shifting and resurfacing with time. The grief never disappears. Not ever.

Those familiar phrases—time heals all wounds—must have been spoken by someone who never walked through the depths of real loss.

Because the ache doesn’t fade. Time may dull the sharpest edges, but it doesn’t truly heal. It creates distance, not relief. It wraps the wound in a thin cover, but the pain beneath still pulses, raw and unchanged.

“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue, and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.” ― Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Trauma has a way of weaving itself in and out of daily life. Some days, I move through the world without consciously thinking of my mother, caught up in routines, distractions, or fleeting moments of peace. And then there are days when she consumes my thoughts, hovering like a shadow I can’t hold, a presence that feels near yet forever out of reach.

Lately, that presence is constant. She lives vividly in my thoughts, coloring everything with her absence.

This is the rhythm of my grief—the ebb and flow of memory and longing.

It’s hard to come to terms with the truth that I never truly knew her.

All the loving, beautiful memories we might have shared were taken from me—lost in an instant, the day I was never allowed to return home. The day I was left behind.

That day changed everything. The life we could have had was stolen, and I was left behind to carry the weight of what would never be.

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