Loving Her, Loving Me
A Mother’s Day reflection on grief, love, and the tangled truth of growing up with an alcoholic mom. This is for the girls who stayed, the ones who left, and the women still learning how to hold both heartbreak and love in the same breath.
This piece holds grief, love, and complicated memory. If Mother’s Day feels heavy for you too—you’re not alone.
Mother’s Day Reflections from the Girl Who Stayed
Mother’s Day is complicated.
Not just for the grieving or the estranged, but for those of us caught in the in-between—where love and pain are tangled so tightly, you can’t always tell which is which.
A few weeks ago, I saw one of my sisters for the first time in 20 years. We stood in the same room again, both of us mothers now, both carrying pieces of a shared childhood that never fit together quite right. We talked about Mom. And for the first time, I heard her story—not the one I knew, but the one that both my sisters lived.
One is twelve years older than me and the other sister’s thirteen. They left when I was young, setting out on a path to build lives of their own. They saw a side of our mom that I only glimpsed through secondhand pain. I didn’t get out. I stayed. I was the kid still holding the rope long after it frayed—hoping, wishing it was strong enough to hold us together.
My sisters are angry. They have every right to be. Mom was an alcoholic. She neglected us. She hurt them in ways I may never fully understand.
And me?
Those hurts didn’t stop after they left. They just changed shape. They lingered. They echoed.
I loved her.
I still do.
And that’s the part I never say out loud, especially not on days like this—days when Instagram blooms with breakfast-in-bed photos and “Best Mom Ever” mugs.
Because how do you explain loving someone who left scars? How do you make sense of missing someone who made you feel small, and responsible, and invisible—sometimes all at once?
How do you say, she was all I had, without sounding like you’re defending the damage?
Mom wasn’t just my mother. She was my person. My constant. My chaos. My heartbreak. My home.
She was also sick, and lonely, and drowning in her own pain.
And I was the kid trying to keep us both afloat.
I didn’t get to be mad. I didn’t get to walk away. I got what was left—and I loved her with everything I had.
That’s not something I’m proud of. But I’m not ashamed anymore, either.
Because loving her wasn’t wrong. It was survival.
And now—fifteen years after her death—I finally understand something I couldn’t see back then:
Love doesn’t need to be clean to be real.
Forgiveness isn’t about pretending it didn’t hurt. It’s about choosing not to carry it forever.
This Mother’s Day, I’m holding both truths:
She hurt me.
I loved her.
And I’m learning to love me, too.
Not just the woman I’ve become, but the girl who stayed. The one who tried her best. The one who needed her mom and clung to whatever version was still there.
To all the girls who loved hard, even when it wasn’t safe—
To the daughters who stayed, and the ones who left,
To the women we’ve become—
You didn’t fail.
You survived.
And now, we get to live.
We get to love ourselves the way we always deserved.
We get to rewrite the ending.
If this post stirred something in you…
Sit with this question for a moment:
What parts of your story still ask for love—even if they were born from pain?
That’s where the healing begins.
That’s where the Rooted Reset starts.
My own journey toward clarity and self-compassion is still unfolding—and I’ve been gathering the tools that help me along the way. If you need a gentle starting point, you’re welcome to begin here: