Grieving Your Mother While She’s Alive: How Grief Lives in the Body

The universal image of a child beaming, arms stretched out to meet her mother in a warm, cozy embrace is familiar to you—but foreign to your body. Even if you’re not a mother yourself, you can imagine how good this feels to a child—except you weren’t that child. And if you are a mother now, this sense of closeness may still feel unfamiliar, even with your own child.

I worked for several years in foster care and saw firsthand how a child who has been neglected and abused would still choose her mother, despite horrific circumstances. It often takes months, years—sometimes a lifetime—for a child (or adult) to name the painful truth: your mother was incapable of caring for you, or even loving you in the way you needed.

And yet, the longing to be seen and held doesn’t disappear. It weaves itself into adulthood and into relationships. When you’ve curated your life enough to finally see your mother as just a woman—not the mother you needed—grief appears.

What Is Grief?

Grief is a deep sense of loss. Death brings grief—but death is not the only way a mother can be lost.

A mother’s regulated nervous system calms a screaming baby. A toddler explores the world one adventure at a time, anchored by the physical presence of her caregiver. Through repetition and development, the child learns that her mother exists even when unseen—this is object permanence. Over time, this becomes a psychological blueprint for safety, security, and connection.

When that blueprint is missing, the child—who later becomes an adult—learns something else instead: emotional hunger. The belief that you must be more, do more, or become someone else in order to be loved. This is a faulty blueprint, and an exhausting one.

Grief often goes unrecognized because it lives beneath the surface—like an undergarment beneath layers of clothing. Anxiety, perfectionism, chronic illness, or depression may be the visible layers. But underneath them all is grief.

Grief is the thread that holds these stories together. Beneath the anger, anxiety, and exhaustion is grief.

It is love that had nowhere to land. Like a seed planted in hardened clay, unable to sprout. What remains is deep sadness and longing. Grieving your mother while she’s alive is, at its core, grieving yourself as a child.

How Grief Shows Up in the Body

Your body is always communicating with you—through sensations, emotions, and symptoms. If you sprain your ankle, you naturally protect it. You rest because you can identify the source of pain. But when the pain comes from years of disappointment, shame, or emotional neglect, it’s easier to dismiss and push through.

The problem is—

Like a sprained ankle, untreated emotional pain doesn’t disappear. It compounds.

Your body compensates. One system takes over for another. Stress builds. Symptoms spread.

Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.

Grief stored in the body may show up as:

• Chronic illness
  

• Persistent exhaustion
  

• Migraines
  

• Digestive or reproductive issues
  

• Autoimmune conditions
  

• Medically unexplained symptoms (MUS)
  

When women come into my practice with anxiety, depression, or panic disorders, I ask about their physical symptoms—not as an afterthought, but as part of understanding the whole system.

When emotional symptoms soften, physical symptoms often follow. Witnessing this as a psychotherapist has been both humbling and affirming.

Your body is not fragmented. It is one integrated system.

This realization shaped my mission: to help women—especially those carrying grief and generational trauma—heal in mind, heart, and body.

A nervous-system-informed approach.

Healing Your Nervous System: Spinal Flow Touch Therapy

Your nervous system is the circuit breaker of your body. It houses the brain and spinal cord, and every peripheral nerve that branches out to your organs. When emotional blockages persist, physical symptoms often follow.

For women with a deep longing for connection, talk therapy or mindfulness alone is often not enough.

The body must relearn what was missed developmentally: safety and security.

People often ask me, Why are the most basic things the hardest to learn?

Because they were never meant to be learned alone.

In my practice, I blend gentle, body-based therapy with deep subconscious healing so change happens not just cognitively, but within the nervous system itself. Spinal Flow is a nervous system healing technique that helps release layers of stored emotional stress.

Your body is designed to be fluid. Cerebrospinal fluid moves from the brain to the base of the spine, supporting regulation, flow, and vitality. Healing allows you to move like a river—rather than remain stuck.

If you’re curious about this work and live in Fairfield, Vacaville, Suisun, Vallejo, or surrounding counties, I invite you to book a consultation and explore what healing can look like for you.

Final Thoughts

Emotions are energy in motion. To be human is to feel sadness, joy, and grief. What creates suffering is not emotion itself, but emotional stagnation—when feelings become trapped and manifest as anxiety, depression, overwhelm, or physical symptoms.

When the root is emotional wounding, logic alone rarely heals. Your nervous system—your body—must reconnect to itself.

As this happens, you begin to remember who you truly are, beneath survival and adaptation.

If you feel ready for healing that honors your nervous system, you’re welcome to book a consultation with Roanne.