The Grief of Mothers

There is a knowing in our bones that the love of a mother for her child is fierce and instinctual. It is often said that the most dangerous animal is a mother protecting her young. We’ve all heard the stories — a woman lifting a car to save her child, or standing fearlessly against impossible odds.

Maternal love is a current of devotion and protection that seems to defy reason. It is raw, unbreakable, and eternal.

So what happens when this devotion has nowhere to go? What happens when a child is lost, or when the bond between mother and child is shattered by hardship, estrangement, or death?

A Mother’s Grief

There are images that reveal the magnitude of maternal grief more than words ever could. One that has always stayed with me is of a mother orca carrying her dead calf at the surface of the water for weeks. Again and again, she pushes the little body upward, refusing to let it sink, circling with a determination we can barely understand. And then one day, quite mysteriously… she lets go.

I have known this grief. I have carried my own children — not physically in my arms, but in the aching places of my heart — again and again, lifting them toward some imagined surface of safety and hope. For years, my grieving took the form of holding on, wishing for things to be different than they were, and being unable to release what had been lost.

Through a community grief ritual retreat, something shifted. For the first time, the complexity of my grief as a mother was fully witnessed — held in a safe, supportive, and ceremonial way.

I was able to bring the enormity of my sorrow out of isolation and into the circle. And in that witnessing, my grief began to metabolize. I found myself able to accept what I had resisted for over a decade. Like the orca mother, I could finally let go — not in abandonment, but in recognition that my child’s path was never mine to carry.

An Unexpected Transformation

I thought acceptance would bring more pain, more devastation. But what came instead was surprising: I felt freer, more grounded, more whole than I had in years. My heart, still so tender, also felt stronger.

This is the mystery of grief. It is not a linear process. It comes in chapters, cycles, and spirals. And sometimes, when we least expect it, grief opens a door into a deeper intimacy with life itself.

The Lifelong Dance

The grief of mothers is not something that ends. It is a lifelong dance between love and loss, holding and letting go. More will always come.

But this transformation has left me with a tender, grateful heart. Grateful for my devotion to my children, to myself, and to the current of pure life force energy that pushes green shoots through cracks in cement, never letting me stop searching. Grateful for the way grief, when given the space it needs, can change us into something more expansive and alive.

Your grief as a mother — whether for a child who has died, a child estranged, a child never born, or a child you had to release in some other way — is sacred. It deserves to be witnessed. It deserves to be honoured. It deserves to be given the dignity of expression.

Because the grief of mothers carries the same primal force as the earth herself: unstoppable, life-shaping, and holy.