What Losing My Mother Taught Me About Love, Grief, and Presence
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Ken Breniman is a queer author, licensed clinical social worker, yoga therapist, and thanatologist guiding fellow mindful mortals at the threshold of life, death, devotion, and (r)evolution. His work blends neuroscience, primatology, Celtic wisdom, and psychedelic integration to invite braver ways of being human.
Losing a mother at a young age reshapes not only one's sense of self, but the very fabric of the world around them. In this deeply personal reflection, Ken Breniman explores the complex grief of growing up motherless and the unbroken bond that remains, transforming how love and loss are understood.
The good-bye that arrived way too soon
There is a particular kind of heartache when you lose your mother young. It is not only the absence of her voice or the way she once tucked you in at bedtime. It is something more disorienting. The deep ache feels as if it is shaped by a question that never gets answered. It feels like a missing tooth the tongue keeps searching for, only to find tender gum.
My mom died when I was eighteen. I was still becoming, still forming a sense of who I was in the world. Like many young people, I carried an unspoken assumption that there would be more time, more chances to ask questions, more ordinary moments that would one day become meaningful in hindsight.
Then, suddenly, I was motherless. There was no ‘good enough’ final exchange. No clear emotional resolution. Just an abrupt ending while the rest of the world continued forward as if nothing had shifted.
Those around me were not grief-literate. I did not know how to seek help. At that age, I went numb, but not before my heart felt as if it had been sucker-punched.
When the world no longer makes sense
What I understand now, decades later, is that I did not just lose my mother. I lost some key assumptions about the world.
Psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman described how we carry fundamental beliefs that life is somewhat predictable, that love will endure long enough for us to make sense of it, and that the people who matter most will remain accessible to us in the ways we expect.
When my mother died, those assumptions shattered. The world no longer felt reliable. Time became less trustworthy. Love, something I believed I could count on, revealed its fragility.
For those who have lost a mother, especially early in life, this experience may feel familiar. The grief is not only emotional, but it is also existential. It reshapes how you understand safety, attachment, and even your own identity.
A motherless child’s mantra: “I am ok”
For many years, I carried this quietly and learned the outward expression of “I am ok." I adulted and built a life. I pursued meaningful work. I eventually entered a profession where I supported others in their grief. From the outside, it looked like I had adapted. Yet beneath all of that, something remained unfinished, a lingering sense that I had not fully said goodbye.
For a long time, I believed that healing meant letting go. I thought I needed closure, some way to complete what had been left open. But maternal grief does not follow a map, nor does it move in a linear or logical way.
The bond that doesn’t break
The Continuing Bonds Theory, introduced by Dennis Klass, Phyllis R. Silverman, and Steven L. Nickman, offers a simple but radical idea, our relationships with those who have died do not end, they transform. Rather than severing the bond, we find new ways to remain in relationship.
That did not feel like theory to me. It felt like recognition or a faint but reassuring signpost.
My mother was no longer physically present, but she had not disappeared. She had become woven into my life in subtler, deeply meaningful ways. I began to notice her in my instincts, in my sensitivities, and in the way I related to the world around me.
She cared for animals, dogs, cats, chickens, and horses, with presence and respect, as if they were part of a shared field of experience. At eighteen, I did not have the language for that. At fifty-six, I recognize it as attunement, even animistic, the sense that the world is vibrantly relational.
Over time, I began to feel that this way of being lived on in me. Not just as memory, but as embodiment. As inheritance.
I could ride a horse and feel the wind against my face. In those moments, I found an experiential connection to something she loved along with a whispering sense of equine-inspired equanimity. Another signpost along the bumpy, twisty road.
A fire, an elder, a practice
Years after my mother’s death, I found myself sitting around a fire with a soft-spoken Hawaiian elder. By then, my grief had softened, but it had not disappeared. It dwelled awkwardly beneath the surface, no longer overwhelming but always present. As I spoke about missing my mother, she listened. No fixing. No reframing. Just presence.
I remember thinking how different our world might feel if more people could simply sit with the bereft in this way. Then she shared a practice rooted in Hawaiian tradition, hoʻoponopono, offered with care and respect for its cultural origins. Not something to take, but something to receive.
This haole was deeply touched to be held by her, willing to be me while tending to the embers that warmed us both. The practice is ancient and simple, but not easy. She offered her rendition with an extra touch of grief medicine, I love you. Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you.
That night, I cried myself to sleep, repeating those words to my mother. Something shifted. Not dramatically. Not in a way that erased grief. But in a way that reopened the relationship. The conversation I never got to finish at eighteen found a new pathway. The bond continued. And with the blessing of a compassionate island elder, I still whisper those words on lonely nights.
For those who still have time
If your mother is still alive, I want to say this clearly, there is still time, but not always as much as you think. Relationships are complex. Some are loving. Some are strained. Some are distant or estranged. There is no one-size-fits-all. But often, there is something unfinished. Not perfection. Not resolution. Just something waiting for presence.
If this brings up anticipatory grief, be with it. Tend to the living, breathing connection, no matter how complicated, messy, or imperfect it may be. Tend to the unfinished business, whatever that may be for you and her. As Mae West once said, “I didn’t say this will be easy, I just said it will be worth it.”
And when that day comes when you are initiated into the motherless children’s club, my hope is that you will carry with you something that feels like a seed of grace, peace, or acceptance. A hard-earned gift that still requires care. What tends to remain are the ordinary details, the way she laughed, the habits that defined her, the ways she tried, even when she missed the mark. Anticipatory grief reveals that the mundane is sacred.
There is still time to meet your mother where she is. Not to fix everything. Not to resolve every tension. But to bring presence to what is already here. To ask the question you have been postponing. To say the thing that feels slightly vulnerable. To sit together without needing anything to change.
And if your mother is alive but you are not in relationship with her, there is still a way to care for yourself. Marsha Linehan offers a guiding principle, “I did the best I could, and I can always improve.” Sometimes healing begins by extending that same grace outward, “She did the best she could…” Connection does not require perfection. It requires presence. We are invited to lean into the messiness, not avoid it. In a living world, even the rose holds its thorns, asking to be appreciated, not avoided.
The rhythm we don’t talk about
The Dual Process Model of Grief, developed by Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut, offers another way to understand this journey. It suggests we move between two modes, one oriented toward the loss, the pain, the absence, and another oriented toward restoration, where we adapt and continue engaging with life. Grief is not linear. It oscillates.
At eighteen, I was immersed in loss. Life, however, required me to function. To keep going. To adapt. So I leaned into restoration before I was ready. I built a life. I became someone. But the grief remained. Not as failure, but as something patient. Waiting for the right conditions to be revisited, not as crisis, but as relationship.
When I sit at an altar and light a candle for my mom years later, I am not overwhelmed. I am tenderized and, dare I say, grateful.
Becoming more you, honoring her
What has emerged from this process is something I did not expect, grief has become an invitation and a companion. Not only to remember, but to become more aware of what it feels like to be me. To notice my sensitivities, my instincts, and my way of moving through the world, and to wonder where that comes from.
For me, the answer often circles back to her. In the way I pause with animals. In the way I feel into spaces others rush through. In the way I allow myself to be moved.
Some might call this empathy. Others might call it animism, the sense that life is present in all things. For me, it feels like continuation, a bond expressed through living.
A story, a mirror, a devotion
Recently, I wrote a fictional story about a man named Chip. He sits at an altar on Mother’s Day, surrounded by objects filled with memory. As he begins to feel into them, the room becomes alive, animals, presence, sensation, connection. In the story, Chip is the last empath in the world. Everything he touches feels. Everything remembers.
As I wrote it, I realized I was not inventing something new. I was expressing something I have come to believe, that connection does not end with death and that grief can open us to a deeper relationship with life itself.
My mother, through her love of horses and her quiet attunement to the world, taught me this long before I had the language. Now, in a way I could not have imagined at eighteen, I find myself dedicating my life to that inheritance.
If you would like to read this devotional short story, I am happy to share it with you. Simply contact me here.
For all of us
Whether your mother is alive or gone, close or complicated, present or distant, Mother’s Day has a way of bringing it all to the surface, love, longing, gratitude, regret. Whatever arises, let it be real. Because love does not follow clean timelines. It is unfinished. It is evolving. It is alive.
If your mother is still here, meet her in the ordinary while you can. If she is gone, your relationship with her is not over, it has simply changed form. For the motherless, you are not alone. For those who still have time, this moment matters more than you think.
And for all of us, perhaps the deeper invitation is this, to become more aware of what it feels like to be ourselves, and, in that awareness, to honor those who shaped us, not only in memory, but in the way we choose to live. Because in the end, it is not the goodbye that defines us. It is the bond that continues.
Read more from Kenneth J. Breniman
Kenneth J. Breniman, Grief Guide & Mindfully Mortal Therapist
Ken Breniman is a queer author, licensed clinical social worker, certified yoga therapist, and thanatologist whose work lives at the intersection of mortality, meaning, and transformation. Drawing from neuroscience, primatology, Celtic wisdom, and psychedelic integration, he challenges the myth of human exceptionalism while honoring the precious role each of us plays in the ongoing evolution of our species. Ken is the author of a three-body solution and subversive acts of humanity, and the creator of the See-Soul children’s grief literacy series. Through writing, teaching, and ritual-informed practice, he guides mindful mortals toward deeper humility, resilience, and collective becoming.
