My friend had a relationship with her mother that took up a lot of space, and not in a good way. A mother who could be sharp-tongued and impossible to please. When her mother died, nothing that came next was simple.
The thing that nobody tells you about grief is that a difficult relationship doesn’t protect you from the feeling of loss. Sometimes it compounds it — because you’re not just grieving the person you had. You’re grieving the person you needed and never got.
The Holiday That Assumes Everyone is Okay
The flower displays go up in early May. The card aisle fills with sentiments about unconditional love and lifelong gratitude. Social media runs a full week of tribute posts. All of it assumes Mother’s Day is a good day for most people.
It isn’t. Not for everyone. For many people, Mother’s Day brings a complicated mix of dread, grief, resentment, and confusion. This “one-size-fits-all celebration” rarely fits the messy realities of real-life relationships.
According to Pew Research, even among young adults, only about 6 in 10 rate their relationship with their parents as excellent or very good. That leaves a lot of people somewhere in between. And that number doesn’t account for loss, estrangement, or the quieter grief of a relationship that was present but painful.
If Mother’s Day feels a bit awkward for you, you’re part of a very large group of people who don’t see themselves in the greeting cards.
When It’s Not That Simple
If your mother dies and the relationship was hard, you may find yourself in confusing territory. Relief and sorrow at the same time. Love and anger. Feelings that seem like they shouldn’t coexist — but grief doesn’t work that way.
The grief educators at What’s Your Grief put it plainly: the pain of a difficult relationship doesn’t die just because the person does. When someone is gone from our lives, there’s an impact. No matter how we felt about them.
You can also grieve a relationship you wished you had and never got. Therapist Stephanie Cox, writing in Psychology Today, points out that holding out for an ideal version of your mother can actually keep you stuck — and that grieving what never was is what begins to free you. That process is rarely quick. And it rarely goes in a straight line.
When the relationship was complicated, there is often no map for what comes next.
The Grief That Doesn’t Have a Name
Some losses never really resolve. There’s no funeral, no casserole brigade, no clear moment where the grief was supposed to begin or end.
Family therapist Dr. Pauline Boss has a name for this. She calls it ambiguous loss — a loss without closure. It can show up when someone is physically gone but still emotionally present, like after estrangement. Or when someone is physically present but not really there anymore — a mother with Alzheimer’s, or one whose addiction has changed who she is.
But it can also be quieter than that. The mother who was there every day, just not in the way you needed her to be. The love that was real, but conditional. Or critical. Or unpredictable.
With ambiguous loss, closure isn’t going to come from her — whether she’s still here or not. Boss’s point, and it matters, is that making peace with the ambiguity itself is usually the path forward. Not waiting for an answer that may never come.
A grief therapist can help. So can journaling, a support group, or simply saying what you’re carrying out loud to someone who won’t minimize it.
When She’s Still Here, but the Relationship is Strained
Not everyone reading this has lost their mother. Some of you are navigating a relationship that is ongoing — and still difficult.
Many people find themselves caught between what they feel and what they believe they should feel. Those estranged from their mothers may experience a blend of guilt, anger, and isolation. For those in low-contact or complicated relationships, Mother’s Day can feel like a performance — forced participation in a ritual that doesn’t reflect your reality.
Those around you may not always get it. When a relationship with a parent is complicated, others sometimes fill in the blanks in ways that aren’t fair to you.
“Should” is a word worth examining. Psychoanalyst Karen Horney wrote about what she called the “tyranny of the shoulds” — the internalized rules about how things are supposed to be don’t align with our actual experience. Mother’s Day is full of shoulds. You should feel grateful. You should call. You should post the photo. When your reality doesn’t match the script, the disconnect is its own kind of grief.
The truth is simpler and harder than that. A long history of unmet needs complicates relationships between parents and adult children. So do patterns that took shape long before anyone had the vocabulary to name them. You don’t have to post a tribute. You don’t have to call if it feels unsafe or triggering. You don’t have to show up at brunch with a smile pasted on your face while pretending things are fine when they aren’t.
What Might Help
There’s no right way to move through Mother’s Day when the relationship is complicated. But a few things tend to help.
- Give yourself permission to step back — from social media, from events, from the obligations that’ll drain you. Brené Brown defines boundaries plainly: your list of what’s okay and what’s not okay. Boundaries define who you are, and who you are not. And it’s okay to let the people in your life know what those are. She frames boundary-setting as courage — the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.. Whether that means buying a card, making contact, or choosing not to — the goal is to honor what actually feels right. Not what you think you’re supposed to do.
- Find someone who gets it. Not to analyze or fix anything — just to witness it. Grief, in all its forms, is harder to carry alone.
- And if the day brings up something deeper — grief that lingers, patterns that feel stuck, a relationship you’re trying to see more clearly — a grief counselor or therapist can help. The Psychology Today therapist directory is a good place to start if you’re looking for someone local.
If you’re somewhere between grieving and not sure what you’re supposed to be grieving, that’s okay. The relationship was complicated. It makes sense that the loss would be too.
Carrie Campbell, Blog Contributor