What No One Tells You About Grief After Losing Your Mother
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How did Tamsen and Hope first describe their experiences of losing their mothers?
Hi friends, I am so glad you're here. Well, today's episode is gonna be a very personal one. And you know, I do a lot of personal episodes, but this one in particular, because we are talking about the loss of a mother. I lost my mom when I was 20 years old. It was a long time ago, but that loss and that feeling of loss never goes away. So if you've been part of this community for any amount of time, you probably know my story. I lost my mom when I was 20 years old. She was 51 at the time. And at that time, I don't think I ever really understood anything about processing grief. I heard the stages of grief, but I didn't know very much. It wasn't until three years ago, I picked up this book, Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman, and it changed absolutely everything for me.
So if your mother passed when you were younger, if your mother passed recently, or if your mother's getting older and you find yourself thinking a lot about that lately, this episode is going to be for you. And I want to say something. Hope's words have changed so many lives. I would love to hear what you think about this episode. Also, if you can, please leave a review. Let us know who else you would love to hear from because it means so much to us and to this community to know what you're thinking. All right, let's go ahead and get into it. Well, Hope, it's so nice to see you.
It is lovely to be here, Tamsen. Thank you.
You know, I want to thank you for your work, first of all, because motherless daughters change so much in me. You know, people that have been in this community know my story. I lost my mom at the age of 20 after a long battle with breast cancer.
Yeah.
And it's now been, I don't even know, 30 years, maybe, maybe more. And I was not recommended this book until three years ago. And I also think it was because I had a hard time talking about it. And I think I realize now why maybe I wasn't recommended the book, because I didn't talk about it. So can you bring me to where this work started for you?
Sure. I was 17 years old when my mother died. Unlike your mom, my mother had a very brief and kind of vicious battle with breast cancer. She was diagnosed when I was 15, and she died two weeks after my 17th birthday. It was the summer between my junior and senior year in high school. And I didn't know any other girls who'd lost a mom other than my sister. So I went looking for books because I was a reader and I couldn't find any for girls who had lost a mom. There weren't any at the time. There were books for adult women who'd lost mothers because that was more common. Sure. But those books all assumed I'd be in my 30s, my 40s, my 50s, not 17.
Mm-hmm.
And I looked for that book for about 10 years, and I never found it. And at that point, I was in a place in my life, in a graduate writing program, and I was encouraged to write it myself. That's just how it came about.
It's incredible because when I think back, it was three weeks after my 20th birthday, and it was during Christmas break, the day after Christmas. And so it's always interesting to me when I hear you tell your story and I hear mine, I hear that same order of, this is the age I was, this is... who I was in my life and what happened. Why is it that we tell those stories kind of the same way?
So interesting. You know, I've worked with thousands of women who have lost mothers when they were young. And by far, like the most defining characteristic and the point on which they are looking for others to connect with is the age at time of loss. And that's because I believe developmentally, the age you were when your mother died is so important. It indicates what you were going through in your life, what developmental tasks you were facing. It determines your level of mental development, which means how much you could understand and often how much was lost. told to you or shared with you and your level of emotional maturity, how much you could handle and how much you needed the other adults around you to show up for you and be there.
So losing a mom at six is different than losing a mom at 17 in so many ways, which is also very different from losing her at 25.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
How did Tamsen and Hope first describe their experiences of losing their mothers?
0:06–7:45
2
Why does the age you were when your mother died shape your grief?
7:45–26:21
3
How can grief show up differently than the 'five stages' Hollywood version?
26:21–52:06
4
What was the reaction when Hope published Motherless Daughters and started hearing readers' stories?
52:06–52:23
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Tamsen Show
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