6 Things About Mother Loss That Every Therapist Should Know

Too often, I’ve heard from women that their therapist does not understand mother loss. They feel that their ongoing grief is frequently dismissed and that the wide-reaching effects of losing a mother are misunderstood by most clinicians.

Hope Edelman and I want to tell you about six surprising things about mother loss that all counselors should know. 

1. Grief for a mother lasts a lifetime. It is perfectly normal for a woman to continue to long for her mother throughout her entire life. 
2. The loss of a mother affects all of a woman’s attachments, including her romantic relationships and her parenting. 
3. Approaching, reaching, and passing her mother’s age at time of death is a significant and emotional rite of passage for daughters. Additionally, watching her child reach the age she was when her mother died can bring on complicated emotions, anxiety, and reactivate old grief. 
4. It’s very common for a woman who lost her mother to feel a lack and deficiency around female identity and motherhood. Often these women will feel a sense of imposter syndrome around other women who have not experienced mother loss. 
5. Mother loss can lead to an intense fear of other losses. Health anxiety, catastrophic thinking, and fear of death or abandonment are common for women who have lost mothers. 
6. Women who have experienced mother loss often feel “stuck” in certain parts of their development, as if a piece of them never got to grow up. 

If you are a mental health professional who would like to learn even more about working with mother loss, please join me and Hope Edelman for a six-week Mother Loss Certification program. Hope and I both bring a wide breadth of personal and professional knowledge to our work. Hope and I have worked with thousands of women and led dozens of retreats to help women who have lost their mothers.

The Mother Loss Certification is open to clinicians, therapists, counselors, graduate-level students, and any other professionals in proximity to grief. We look forward to providing you with the tools you need to support daughters through their journey of mother loss. Learn more and apply >>

Find books and online support for mother loss on my Grief Resource page.