The Love That Finds Its Way Back: A Mother & Daughter Story

Some relationships are built to withstand storms.

Not because they’re perfect.

But because they are rooted in something deeper...something that survives truama, silence, distance, grief, misunderstanding, hurt and change.

That’s what I’ve come to realize about the love between a mother and daughter.

About the love between me and mine.

My mom and I have been through so much....together and apart. For the first 26 years of my life, we were almost inseparable... so we say... "Emeshed" as my dad and therapists say... I mean that's probably true because I never went more than a few days without hearing her voice or feeling her presence.... But over the last few years, something shifted. Life shifted. Trauma surfaced. Grief entered. Distance stretched.

We hurt each other. We misunderstood each other.

We both had healing to do.

We both went back to therapy.

Grief hit us in waves after losing her mom...my Nana. And it didn’t just take a piece of her...it touched us both. It changed the way we showed up. We each became quiet in our own pain, and for the first time in my life, I felt far from the one person who always felt like home....

Seven months have passed since I’ve seen her....And there were times within those months that even hearing her name or seeing a photo of us together hurt...it made my heart ache...in a way it's never ached before...

You see I thought I knew who my first love was ... but I was very wrong. It wasn't a man...

It was her.

It is her.

It hurt....Not because I didn’t love her...but because I loved her so much it hurt...

There’s this magnet she once gave me... It’s been on our fridge for years. It reads:

> “The love between a mother and daughter… there is a bond of the strongest kind. It is a love of the present interwoven with memories of the past and dreams of the future. It is wanting only the best for each other and wanting to help any time there is a need. It is making time to be together and knowing just what to say. It is an unconditional forever kind of love.”

For a while, that magnet was hard to look at...in fact I stuck it to the side of our fridge instead...lol ( it's back on the front now♡)

So was the framed picture she gave me...the one that says:

> “My beautiful daughter, I want you to always know that in good times and bad times I will love you. And no matter what you do, or how you think, or what you say, you can depend on my support, guidance, friendship, and love every minute of every day. I love being your mother.”

Those words used to feel like reminders of what we’d lost.... Like a broken promise of unconditional love...

Now… they feel like promises we found our way back to 🫶

Because the truth is: We carry so much of each other....

In our stubbornness. In our strength. In our faith that never waivers. In our resilience to still fight to keep the pieces of ourselves truama tried to destroy...In the way we love hard and feel deeply.

There’s so much of her in me...

So much of me...in her...

And now that I can see that clearly...I don’t look at those gifts with pain...

I look at them with gratitude.

I used to think that “fighting for something” was just a romantic concept meant for love and marriage. That it only applied to husbands and wives who made it through hell and held onto love....

But these past three years since we moved from Florida...it's taught me that mothers and daughters have their own kind of fight too...

And the ones who make it through?

They come out stronger.

I’ve always said that the relationships that endure the things that were meant to destroy them… are the ones worth holding onto.

That’s what this is.

My mom and I didn’t lose each other.

We found a new way back. A deeper one. A more honest one. A healthier one.

One where we both had to do the inner work.

One where I finally understood that no one is all good or all bad...not her, not me, not anyone.

We are both perfectly imperfect, loved by a perfect God.

And that perfect God...gave me her.

I’ve always feared losing my mom more than anything else in this world.... But now, I don’t fear the hard seasons. Because we’ve proven we can get through them.

We’ve proven that love...real love...comes back. It heals. It grows. It gets stronger.

And it doesn’t give up.

So today, I say it proudly:

I love my mom.

I see her.

I respect her.

I carry her with me.

And I wouldn’t choose anyone else to be mine.

---

Scripture to close this chapter:

“Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.”

— Proverbs 31:31

With all the layers of love...

Kristen, Unfiltered Xo 💋