Closure With an Abusive Mother: Learning to Let Go Without Erasing the Pain

​There is a particular kind of grief that comes with losing an abusive mother.

It is not simple.

You are not only grieving the person who died. You are grieving the mother you needed but never had. You are grieving the childhood you deserved. You are grieving the safety, tenderness, protection, and unconditional love that should have been yours.

And sometimes, you are grieving while carrying anger.

For a long time, I thought closure would come from understanding why she treated me the way she did. Maybe if I understood her pain, her childhood, her struggles, or the things that happened to her, I would finally understand why she hurt me.

But healing taught me something different.

Understanding someone does not erase what they did to you.

My mother was still my mother. She was also someone who caused me pain.

Both truths can exist at the same time.

I don’t have to rewrite my childhood because she is no longer here. I don’t have to turn her into a perfect mother simply because she has died. Death does not erase abuse. It does not automatically make the relationship beautiful. And it certainly does not erase the little girl who had to survive things she should never have experienced.

For me, closure is not forgiveness on demand.

It is not saying, “She did the best she could,” when parts of me are still trying to understand what happened.

Closure is accepting that I may never get the apology I deserved.

I may never hear her say, “I was wrong.”

I may never receive an explanation that makes everything make sense.

And I have had to learn that I cannot keep my life on hold waiting for something that may never come.

There is freedom in accepting that.

I can acknowledge that she hurt me without allowing that hurt to become my identity.

I can mourn her without mourning myself forever.

I can remember the painful moments without allowing them to convince me that I am unlovable.

And perhaps the hardest part is learning to separate the mother I had from the mother I needed.

Because sometimes, what we miss is not necessarily the person.

We miss the possibility.

We miss the mother who would have hugged us when we were afraid. The mother who would have protected us. The mother who would have believed us. The mother who would have celebrated our achievements without jealousy or competition. The mother who would have looked at us and made us feel safe simply because we were hers.

Losing that possibility can hurt deeply.

But I am learning that I don’t have to spend the rest of my life trying to earn the love I should have received freely.

I don’t have to become smaller to be accepted.

I don’t have to keep explaining myself.

I don’t have to carry guilt because I finally chose myself.

And I don’t have to feel ashamed because my grief is complicated.

Some days, I may miss her.

Some days, I may feel angry.

Some days, I may feel nothing at all.

And all of those feelings are allowed.

Healing is not always a beautiful, linear journey. Sometimes healing looks like crying. Sometimes it looks like setting boundaries. Sometimes it looks like finally saying, “This happened to me, and it was not my fault.”

And sometimes, healing is simply waking up one morning and realizing that you are no longer waiting for the person who hurt you to become the person who saves you.

You become that person for yourself.

That is what closure means to me.

Not forgetting.

Not pretending.

Not excusing.

But releasing myself from the responsibility of carrying a relationship that caused me so much pain.

I am allowed to build a life that feels safe.

I am allowed to experience love without fear.

I am allowed to become the woman that the little girl inside me needed.

And perhaps that is the greatest form of closure I can give myself:

To stop asking why she couldn’t love me the way I needed…

and start giving myself the love I spent years waiting for.

I survived her.
I survived the childhood.
And now, I get to live beyond it.

This is my true story