There is something about Mother’s Day that is almost never said out loud: it is not a day for everyone. While the world celebrates, there is a part of us that exists outside of that narrative. Those of us who no longer have her here. Those of us who have learned to live with her absence in a world that does not pause for it. This piece is for us. Because even if the world does not think about us that day, we never stop thinking about them.
Mother’s Day does not change the pain. It changes how visible it becomes. It is a day that exposes what the rest of the year we learn to carry quietly. Not because anything different happens, but because everything around insists on an emotion that no longer belongs to us.
Author: Claudia Valdez
When love remains, but presence no longer exists.
For those of us who no longer have her, this does not start today
I think about her every day. It is not a way of saying it. It is literal. She exists in the everyday, in the gestures that remain, in the way I look for her without even realizing it. In my case, in her voice. In the audios I listen to again, not as a memory, but as a way of still feeling accompanied. It is not nostalgia. It is presence, just somewhere else.
For a long time, grief was understood as something you get over. Today, it is understood differently. It is not about closure, but about reorganization. William Worden describes it as tasks, not stages: learning to live in a world where that person is no longer there, and still continuing. There is no clear ending. Only adaptation.
The bond does not disappear, it changes place
There is an idea that feels uncomfortable at first, even painful, and then slowly begins to make sense: the bond does not disappear, it transforms. You keep thinking of her, following her in what you do, recognizing her in who you are. You do not stop having a mother. But she no longer exists in the same place, and that tension is not resolved. You learn to hold it.
There are days when you feel stronger, and others, like this one, when it becomes more evident. Not because it hurts more, but because everything around points to it.
With time, something shifts. Not because you are “better”, but because you do not have another option but to adapt.
The world continues, you reorganize
The world continues, we know that. And it breaks something in us, but it is also okay that it does. Within that constant movement, there is something that does not quite find a place. Grief is not visible. It is not explained. And that is why sometimes it feels more isolating than sad.
It also shows up in ways that are not always understood. Exhaustion. Disconnection. Difficulty concentrating. It is not weakness. It is the body adapting to something it cannot resolve.
Not all of us have something to celebrate. And recognizing that should not feel uncomfortable. Because this day also belongs to those who live it through absence, through memory, through a relationship that no longer has a physical form.
With time, something shifts. Not because you are better, but because you do not have another option but to adapt. You continue your life, you do what you have to do, you hold yourself together, and at the same time there is something that does not leave. Psychology would call it integration. I understand it more simply: you carry it with you.
And that is how you live.
For those who today also have no one to call, you are not alone, and there is no correct way to move through this day. Some celebrate. And some hold it together.
It is not a lesser version, it is another way of being, and it counts.
