How a Mother's Death Makes You Confront Your Own Mortality

"A mother's death is life-altering. Whether close, indifferent, or estranged, the relationship between a mother and child is weighty, monumental, and closely tied to self-image. When our mother dies, it's a rite of passage that awakens our own mortality and reminds us that we are now the end of the line-that we have gone from rooted to the world by the physical existence of the person we call mother to the one responsible for shaping our own legacy and heritage."

"For people who are not close to their mothers, or whose relationships are conflictual, death may bring relief and a chance to start anew. For others, a mother's passing becomes the marker of before and after. Before, when the universe felt smaller, protected, and secure, and after: a time of stretching out, vulnerability, and the shakiness of standing on your own two feet, without assistance, and carving your own path forward."

"Mothers are the starting point of our existence, the delicate but indissoluble filament that ties us to this Earth. When they die, and we continue to breathe, walk, and live without their presence, it calls into question our own existence. How can one half of a life-giving connection continue to survive when the other half-the greater half, the birthing half, the half that tethers us to life-is severed?"

A mother's death awakens awareness of mortality and functions as a rite of passage. The loss reshapes self-perception, forcing a shift from being rooted by a maternal presence to standing alone. Relationships range from relief after conflict to profound rupture for the close, creating before-and-after markers in life. The absence challenges the continuity of existence and raises questions about surviving when the life-giving half is gone. Grief can be an isolating dissolution that simultaneously begins a new, internalized connection as one carries maternal love, advice, and responsibility forward. The survivor inherits familial legacy and must navigate purpose and identity anew.

Read at Psychology Today