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For most of her life, Emily Morehead enjoyed a close relationship with her mother, turning to her for pregnancy and early parenting advice when Morehead had her first child. But when her mother got into an unhealthy relationship that started to affect Morehead’s ability to be the kind of mother and partner she wanted to be, she made the difficult decision to become estranged.
There was a moment seven years ago when things crystallized for Morehead. Her phone started ringing — it was her mother calling — and her 9-month-old baby immediately began wailing.
“That was the moment I decided estrangement was the right move for me,” said Morehead, co-owner of The Couch Therapy in Texas and a licensed professional counsellor with a certification in perinatal mental health.
“I think every time I had picked up the phone, I would then cry or I would be in emotional upheaval. Now my child, at 9 months old, can feel my emotional disregulation. It was a choice I made at the time for him, but I really think, in choosing him, I also chose myself.”
Estrangement between adult children and their parents has gotten more attention in recent years. Mainstream publications, including Vogue, Cosmopolitan and The Atlantic, have covered the subject, and on TikTok, #NoContactFamily videos explore the many reasons these relationships end, such as a parent’s addiction, refusal to seek treatment for a mental illness, abuse, neglect, choosing career over family, a breakdown of trust, or a parent failing to take the time to get to know their child.
Some reports suggest the number of Americans severing ties with their parents is on the rise. According to a 2022 study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, about one-quarter of American adults were estranged from their fathers, and 6% were estranged from their mothers.
Being A Motherless Mother
Estrangement from a parent is hard enough. But mothering a child when you don’t have a mother yourself is a grind. I should know: I made the same decision as Morehead almost nine years ago, after decades of struggles with my own mother.
Though ending our relationship ultimately helped me get myself and my life back on track, I still have really hard days; Mother’s Day is especially brutal. Trying to mother someone else when I have no one to mother me — no mom to call when my child is sick and crying, no grandmother to celebrate my son’s big wins and milestones — can be agonising.
The pain is understandable, I think; parental estrangement is what Morehead calls an “ambiguous loss.” You experience grief, may be flooded by it, but there are no grief rituals to help you process that loss or help others understand why you’re in so much pain. It’s confusing, and like any grieving process, the pain can look different from day to day.
For motherless mothers, raising your children can be a daily reminder of the wounds of your childhood and the absence of your own mom. Still, according to therapists specialising in family estrangement, there are ways for moms without moms to survive and even thrive.
Preparing For Motherhood When You Don’t Have a Mom
Before becoming a mom, my feelings about parenthood were a gnarled mess. I wondered if I should even have children, given the example I’d had and the motherly instincts I was sure I’d inherited. I wondered if I could be a kind and capable mother or if my child would reject me, too.
Tirrell De Gannes, a licensed clinical psychologist in New York who often works with adult children estranged from their parents, said many soon-to-be moms feel the same way. “The most common question I get is, ‘What am I supposed to do as a mother?’ Or, ‘Am I going to be a bad mom?’” he said.
To shift this kind of thinking, De Gannes shares two points with his clients: First, that seeking therapy is an indication that you care about how your children will perceive you — a good thing. And second, that you surely absorbed some positive lessons from your mother along with the negative.
“Sometimes it’s direct, and sometimes it’s in spite of,” he said of the lessons. Take addiction, for example. “You may have learned firsthand how impactful it is to choose smoking or drinking instead of your family, and that’s why you can actively have a dry household or you can teach your children what the impact of that is and talk to them about the importance of family.”
When Morehead works with patients experiencing estrangement, she advises them to build solid support systems before their children are born. Since you won’t have your own mom to call on, she said, you need to meet that need in other ways.
“Maybe it’s talking to your OB-GYN about, ’Hey, I don’t have a lot of support and this might be really difficult, and if it’s difficult is there a medicine you could refer me to if I start struggling with depression or anxiety,” Morehead said. “Or maybe it’s talking to your best friend about, ‘Can you visit me on Wednesdays after the baby is born and just make sure I’m doing OK? Here’s what it would look like if I wasn’t doing OK.’”
She also recommended talking to your partner — if you have one — about what shared caregiving responsibilities will look like, so you can get the breaks you need and take care of yourself when you’re struggling, and thinking about the local parents groups you can join to meet and connect with other new moms.
“There are so many different spaces where you can find people who will speak to you honestly about the struggles of motherhood,” she said. “Just because you don’t have that biological connection, doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve to talk about [your struggles].”
Surviving The Hardest Days
When you’re mothering without a mom, some days just feel impossible. Maybe you catch a glimpse of your mother’s face in your child’s, or you simply want to know how much you weighed at a certain age to compare your baby’s growth progress — those small moments can be intense reminders of your own loss, activating waves of grief.
In those instances, it’s important to make sure your immediate needs are met, said Morehead. Ask yourself, “Have I had breakfast? Did I eat something with protein? Did I have a drink of water?” she said. “It’s the same thing you would do for your baby” — identifying their need and meeting it — “and you have to do that for yourself.”
When those basic needs are covered, you can start to get curious with yourself about why this particular moment is so difficult for you.
You want to get to a place where you can ask yourself questions like, “Why does my baby’s cry so overwhelm me?” Morehead said. “It makes sense that the cry feels overwhelming — it’s loud, it’s biological that we want to respond to it.” But also, how did your parents respond — or fail to respond — when you cried or asked for help growing up that might be triggering you now? Exploring those kinds of questions can help you work through the pain and grief of the moment.
“You’re having to reparent yourself,” Morehead said.
Navigating The Grandmother Question
A big question I’ve grappled with since becoming a mom is, how do I talk to my son about his grandmother? She lives far away, so he’s not likely to bump into her, but he’ll almost surely have questions as he gets older.
De Gannes recommended being frank about the relationship in an age-appropriate way. “I see a lot of parents try to skirt issues as they come up, but that only teaches the children that when something’s uncomfortable, you have to avoid that question,” he said.
Instead, when your kid asks about their grandparent, “You can say, ‘Well, actually, Mom doesn’t really have a great relationship with them,’” explaining that there were things that happened in your life that made it hard for you to like each other, De Gannes said. You don’t have to get into the details, especially if your kids are young, but it’s important to be honest about the fact that your parent isn’t in your life.
“Children will take that, understand it, accept it, and then you move forward,” he said. “As they get older, you can go into more detail, if you wish, or if you think that’s enough and they get it, that’s fine as well.”
The truth, ultimately, is that navigating motherhood when you’re estranged from your mom is difficult. There’s no silver bullet or bit of simple advice that will make your dark days instantly brighter, or wipe away your fears of failure. Whether you became estranged before you had kids or separated from your mother after their birth, making the choice to protect your kids — and your own peace — from the person who raised you is going to be painful and bring up hard questions.
Still, it’s important to remember you’re not the only influence on your kids, said De Gannes. Yes, you can work to be a better mom than your own mother was, but ultimately, you will never be the sole factor defining the course of your child’s life.
“Parenting is like firing an arrow from a bow,” he said. “You can take all the time you need to prepare, pull back as hard as you can, try to guide them to what your target is — which is usually just to be a good person — but the second you release that arrow, you have less control than you’ve ever had. It’s the wind, and it’s gravity, it’s all the forces around it that are going to help guide it. You just have to hope you did the best you can to account for all of that. But ultimately, you just have to let them fly and get to that target.”
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