Loss has a way of revealing what was always there but never fully named
My mother died in the early hours two days ago, and while I expected sadness, what arrived first was clarity. Not about her death, but about how I learned to survive her life.
I realized, with a kind of blunt, embodied truth, that I grew up feeling I didn’t deserve to be loved. Not because I was unlovable. But because she didn’t know how to love in the ways a child needs.
And grief, strangely, made that visible.
The Shadow That Surfaces When a Parent Dies
When a parent dies, you don’t just grieve who they were. You grieve what you never received. You grieve the child who learned to disappear so the relationship could survive.
For me, that disappearance started early. Around age five, I would retreat into the washroom, take off my clothes, and stand there naked. At the time I didn’t understand why. Now I do.
A child uses the body to ask for closeness when words don’t exist yet. And when closeness has already become unpredictable, the child withdraws. Numb. Invisible.
Disappearing in an attempt to be seen.
The Family System I Was Born Into
My mother wasn’t unloving. She was under-held, under-seen, and under-nurtured long before I entered the picture. A father away at war, stationed in Reykjavík. A mother working constantly, emotionally distant. A culture of restraint, survival, and endured hardship. And later, a husband whose neurological illness began stealing him away years before anyone understood why.
She did what she could with the nervous system she had.
And as children do, I blamed myself for the rest.
The Patterns That Formed in Me
Here is what emotional scarcity teaches a child: closeness is precious, affection is unpredictable, love might disappear.
So I grew into an adult who craves physical affection deeply but fears losing it even more. Who over-explains to feel seen. Who withdraws into shutdown when overwhelmed. Who latches onto rejection cues. Who longs for connection but assumes it won’t last.
Not pathology, just patterning. Not insecurity, just adaptation.
This is my nervous system’s autobiography.
The Weekend That Preceded Her Death
Strangely, the weekend before I received the news was a preview of this clarity.
I attended a masterclass on discipline. I found myself trying to explain my worldview, trying to be understood, trying to be seen – and feeling something in me tighten when I wasn’t.
My mind latched onto the moments of disconnection rather than the moments of welcome. Classic negativity bias, shaped by an attachment system built in an unpredictable home.
I felt unsupported in the workshop, not because people were unkind, but because the space lacked the embodied safety my nervous system reads as “home.”
Then the news came. And everything sharpened.
The Present-Moment Realization: I’m Grieving the Mother I Never Had
This grief is not for the woman who died at 90. This grief is for the five-year-old boy in the washroom. This grief is for the decades of withdrawal I carried forward into adulthood. This grief is for the years I was physically present but emotionally distant from my own children – especially during COVID, when the world itself went shutdown.
This is shadow work in real time: seeing the wound, naming it, and not blaming the child for it anymore.
What Do I Do With This Now?
I keep coming back to a single sentence: No child should ever have to feel unworthy of love.
And that includes me.
So perhaps this is my work going forward: to help people remember that they deserve to be held, but only after I learn to hold myself. Not perfectly. Not heroically. But honestly. With the same tenderness I wish I had been shown.
Conclusion: This Moment Is a Beginning, Not an End
My mother’s death did not create this insight.
It allowed it.
The loyalty contract dissolved. The shadows stepped forward. The body finally spoke.
And I’m listening.
I don’t know yet whether I will fly back to England for the funeral. I don’t know how this chapter will end. But I do know this: when I hold my children now, I hold them with the awareness of a man who has finally begun learning how to hold himself.
And that is where healing begins.