Becoming My Mother: Sometimes the Grief Comes Back

Tonight after my dad and his wife left my house, I sat in silence thinking something I have thought many times before:

Is this a pattern?

Not just with him.
Not just with family.
But throughout my life.

The feeling of trying so hard to be understood by people who only ever seem to meet you halfway.

The feeling of walking away from conversations emotionally full while everyone else appears unaffected.

The feeling of becoming “too much” simply because you care deeply, notice details, remember things, and attach meaning to moments other people move past quickly.

I have spent a lot of my life trying to understand people. Trying to bridge gaps. Trying to create connection. Trying to hold families, friendships, communities, rescues, teams, and dreams together with pure intention and heart.

But lately I’ve started asking myself a harder question:

What happens when you spend so much time trying to emotionally reach others that you stop asking whether they are reaching back?

Tonight reopened old grief for me. Not just grief over losing my mom, but grief over how quickly life changes around us while everyone silently expects us to adapt.

I have always said my mom was the glue that held everything and everyone together. Tonight, for the first time, I realized that for better or worse, I have become her in so many ways.

She died at 49 from what doctors called cardiomyopathy, but I still believe part of it was a broken heart. Even at the end, she was so selfless that she hid how serious things really were. She softened the prognosis. Protected everyone else from the weight of it.

And tonight I found myself wondering whether I have followed some of those same patterns without realizing it.

My mom felt very close to me tonight. I know that sounds strange to some people, but I know she was here. And somehow, silently, she reminded me that my dad is still in there somewhere too. The good parts of him still exist, even if they have become harder to see through years of hurt, distance, avoidance, and the quiet ways people change after grief.

Maybe that happened to me too.

Maybe parts of me became buried under survival, disappointment, caregiving, grief, and trying to keep peace for everyone else.

But I’m not interested in hiding my honest and good parts anymore.

The first Christmas after my mom died, my dad and his now-wife went to Cancun. Meanwhile Brian and I were home with our two-year-old son who had just been diagnosed with autism, trying to grieve while also helping my dad sell his house and hold everything together emotionally.

Then the following Thanksgiving, they got married and told us afterward. When I expressed how painful that felt, her response was, “Well, we didn’t tell anyone.”

But not telling anyone does not make it hurt less.

I admitted some of this tonight after my third shot of tequila, probably more honestly than I usually allow myself to. And sitting here now, I have this strange feeling that maybe I won’t see my dad or her again at this point. The truth is, I honestly don’t know how I feel about that.

There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes from being the emotionally aware person in a family system that survives by avoiding uncomfortable truths.

You begin to question your own reality because everyone else keeps functioning as though nothing meaningful happened.

But meaningful things did happen.

My mother died.

My relationship with my father changed in ways I still do not fully understand.

And somewhere along the way, I learned to become “understanding” about things that probably deserved more honesty, acknowledgment, and accountability than I ever received.

That changes a person.

Maybe that is why I connect so deeply to animals, storytelling, rescue work, and preserving things that matter before they disappear.

Because I know what it feels like to watch something important slowly become emotionally unreachable while everyone pretends it is still intact.

I don’t think I’m broken for feeling deeply.

But I do think I’ve spent too much of my life searching for emotional safety in people who may not even fully understand themselves.

Ironically, animals have often given me what humans struggle to give consistently:
presence,
honesty,
comfort,
co-regulation,
and unconditional connection.

Maybe that’s part of why cats became so important in my life.

Not because they replaced people.

But because they helped me survive people.

The older I get, the more I realize healing is not about becoming less sensitive.

It’s about learning where your sensitivity is safe.

Maybe Phoenix Legacy was never just about preserving Thai cats.

Maybe it was also about preserving the parts of myself I kept losing while trying to belong in places that could not fully hold me.

I think part of healing is finally allowing yourself to say:
“That hurt me.”
Without immediately minimizing it to keep everyone else comfortable.

And maybe that is the pattern I am finally breaking.