In my Facebook memories for today, there was a post I’d shared several years ago that talked about grief. The quote was allegedly from someone named Jamie Anderson, and the last sentence said, “Grief is love with no place to go.”

I’m still coming to terms with the fact that my steadfastness in my decision to end my relationship with my toxic narcissistic mother doesn’t absolve me of any grief in losing her. Indeed, I grieve the loss of our relationship, and the loss of other relationships I had with people who remained too close to her for me to feel safe with them. I grieve the nearly three decades of memories I do possess, and the memories we never got to make. I know with every fiber of my being that it was the right thing to do, establishing an ironclad boundary and no longer speaking to my mother. But it doesn’t change the fact that I miss my mom.

After almost seven years of it, I’m struggling to give myself permission to feel that feeling. In a way it seems hypocritical. But I think that idea of hypocrisy is rooted in the false notion that cutting her off was an easy choice, when it has been and continues to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Nothing about this is simple. It’s only made more complicated by the fact that I am fully aware that my mother is in poor health now; in October 2023, I was forced to step in and make some decisions with the hospital social worker and doctors when she was extremely ill and on life support (after weeks of thinking it could be the end, it turned out that she ended up pulling through, long story short). The end of her life may or may not be near, and so that sort of “life shift” — if we can call it that — is on adding more complexity to an already challenging situation. In whatever spare space my brain has, the grief filters in to fill it.

The truth is, I’ve been here before. I’ve already lost a parent with whom I had an extremely complicated relationship and with whom I was not speaking at the time they passed away. I have a remarkably accurate blueprint to follow here. When my father died, I gave a lot of thought to whether I would attend his funeral (I did), and whether I should give a eulogy (I did), and what I would say. The details of my father’s shortcomings in his short life were public knowledge to anyone who would attend his funeral, so, it was hardly like I could stand up there and sing false praises. In the end, I spoke about what positive things I could remember that were worth sharing, and acknowledged that I was mourning the loss of the man I knew, not the man who had just died. Indeed, in the interest of being honest, I’d been mourning the loss of the man I knew long before he’d passed away. Even now, nearly 18 years later, when I find myself missing my dad, that’s who I miss. He’d become an unrecognizable facsimile of the man I knew by the time he was gone. Not the same person. Maybe that sounds harsh, but that’s how I was able to make sense of it all, and organize my feelings.

Grieving the loss of my mother — even while she’s still alive — is eerily similar. I miss the good moments, the ones we had before the bad moments outweighed them too much. I miss laughing with her. I miss reminiscing with her. I miss listening to her tell what life was like for her when she was young. I miss telling her things. I miss calling her to ask for the most inane advice. I miss cooking for her (she would herself admit that my cooking skills had surpassed her own, a surprising concession of ego for her actually). I miss being able to ask her questions about family photos or recipes or stories. There are things I never told her; she’s going to die without ever knowing that I accidentally chopped off the top of my thumb seven years ago. She’s going to die without knowing that the dog I rescued from her house after she left her behind had a wonderful rest of her life with us before we had to say goodbye to her in 2022. She’s going to die without ever meeting her granddaughter (which is a very deliberate and correct choice on my part but it’s still quite sad).

It is very complicated. But, simply put, I miss my mom.

My daughter and I were watching an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond last night, titled “Mia Famiglia”, where a long lost relative from Italy comes to visit the Barones…and eventually they figure out she isn’t actually related to them. It’s a very funny episode, but a lot of the time it just fills me with an aching sadness inside. They gather to eat a great home cooked meal, they sing together, they show each other love and care, they greet everyone who walks in the door with a passionate cheer…yes, it’s television. But it’s also literally how I grew up whenever we visited my mother’s side of the family (over 30 cousins). It’s how my mother always was, when the rot of narcissism hadn’t been so obvious or severe. I barely talk to my cousins these days, and it’s mostly because, for years now, I haven’t been sure how aligned with her they were. At a time where that uncertainty felt dangerous to me, I had to make the unfortunate choice to distance myself from them too. Occasional conversations with a couple of my cousins have gone okay, but reestablishing connections has been difficult. It’s something to keep working on; it honestly hurts to think about.

It’s very complicated. But, simply put, I miss my family. Mi mancha la mia famiglia.

My husband is one of four siblings who are all married with children, and his parents are alive and well, as is an uncle and his three daughters and their families. In other words, he has a big family. They’re my family too now, of course. I love them all very much. Still, I often think about my daughter’s family tree as being so lush and full on her father’s side…and woefully bare on my side. It’s unfair. It’s reality, but it’s unfair.

“Grief is love with no place to go.” I have become accustomed to carrying it along with me. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that grief doesn’t fade or disappear; we just grow around our grief, becoming a bigger vessel in order to accommodate it and still carry on. I’m following my therapist’s instructions and letting myself feel it all, instead of shying away from it or avoiding it by intellectualizing it. Thanks Doc, I hate it. You’re right, but I hate it. It feels so murky and muddy. Next week, let’s talk about how to wash off the mud after we’ve let ourselves sit in it, shall we?

I suspect that, if grief is love with no place to go, making you feel like falling apart, the solution is to lean into the love you have in your life, to help put yourself back together again. I may be missing mia famiglia, but I’m certainly not without love in my life, for which I am very grateful.