What No One Tells You About Grief After Losing Your Mother
7/16/202655 min
This one is for all the women out there who lost their mothers.
If you’ve ever wondered why grief from a mother's death doesn't follow the timeline the world expects, why it surges at 51 when you pass the age your mother died, why menopause brings a wave of loss that has nothing to do with hormones, or why you still don't know how to answer "I'm sorry" decades later, this episode is the one you've been waiting for.
Tamsen Fadal lost her mother at 20. For nearly 30 years she didn't talk about it.
Hope Edelman lost her mother at 17, couldn't find a single book written for young women who'd gone through the same thing, and eventually wrote it herself. That book, Motherless Daughters, has now reached millions of readers and sparked decades of retreats, support groups, and communities built around the specific kind of grief that never goes away.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why your age at the time of loss is the most defining factor in how mother loss shapes you
- What "new old grief" is, and why it floods back the moment you become a mother yourself
- Why grief that looked like getting a tattoo, changing your friend group, or throwing yourself into work is still grief
- The difference between guilt and regret, and why so many daughters are carrying the wrong one
- What "crossing the silent threshold" means when you outlive your mother's age
- Why the five stages of grief were never designed for the people left behind
- How to rebuild a relationship with your mother's memory even decades after her death
- Why women in their 50s are showing up to grief retreats for the first time and feeling relief they haven't felt in 30 years
- What perceived vulnerability looks like, and why it drives behaviors people around you can't understand
If you like this episode, then you will love: What I've Learned After 35 Years Without My Mom
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsTamsen Fadal· Host0:00
[upbeat music] 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, you know, 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 wanna 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. You know I've been on this mission to simplify everything lately, my closet, my schedule, even my makeup. The older I get, the less interested I am in spending 20 minutes layering on products just to look like myself. That's why I have been loving Jones Road Beauty. Miracle Balm has