A friend once said that sometimes we have to lose someone we love before we can see what was always there. I believe that is true. As hard as it was losing Mum, it took me much longer to understand that her death had given me the distance to see the emotional patterns I had lived with all my life – but had never recognised them because they had always seemed normal.
When my mother died 19 years ago, I thought I would simply be dealing with her loss. I had no idea that her death would become the starting point for understanding my own life.
At the time, I didn't know I was looking for answers because I didn't know what the questions were. I was trying to cope with her loss. Without realising it, I had spent my life living according to the emotional dynamics I had grown up with. I think we all do. Those dynamics shaped how I thought about myself, how I related to others and how I was able to respond to my own challenges.
Mum's passing created a break in that pattern. I began to understand that many of the ways I responded to people weren't a reflection of who I was. They were emotional survival strategies I'd learned over time.
That realisation didn't happen overnight. It took a willingness to examine myself and my experiences – experiences I had ignored because, at the time, there seemed to be no opportunity to change them. In time, losing a parent means you come to understand that the loss you feel doesn't only involve the person who has died. Sometimes it reveals and exposes the parts of ourselves that have been hidden for years.
For me, understanding my childhood was inseparable from understanding my adulthood. I slowly began to see the connection between my early experiences and the way I had lived my life. I began to recognise patterns of behaviour that I had long accepted as part of who I was. In reality, they weren't. They were learned responses – ways for me to survive emotionally.
Losing Mum didn't solve those issues. If anything, it brought them into sharper focus. But it did give me the opportunity to ask questions I had never asked before, and to do the research – to begin to understand the difference between adapting to circumstances, versus choosing to live authentically.
Her passing marked the beginning of a different chapter. Not because her loss changed me, but because it helped me to see myself and my life more clearly.
It was the first time I had come to understand that I had spent much of my life surviving.
The years since then have been about catching up on learning about myself.
My current understanding is that both Mum and Dad have become much clearer about the consequences of their actions. For Mum, that clarity has brought genuine remorse. Dad, I believe, is moving in that direction, but has not yet reached the same place.
