After my mom died, I was tasked with cleaning out the childhood bedroom that had always remained for me in her house. A time-capsule like clutter had accumulated in the years since I’d been gone, and beneath a pile of teeny-bopper magazines and old yearbooks I found something buried: a journal that we shared when I was sixteen.
May 14th 2000
Mom,
What you’re reading right now is history in the making. I’m sure you’re thinking, okay, how would one of Melissa’s diaries be that important? Well, this isn’t just one of my dorky journals. It’s OUR dorky journal now! I have this great idea…
I suggested that we pass the journal back and forth and take turns writing to each other, presenting it as a Mother’s Day present. We did that for a while, and the first twenty pages or so are filled with a combination of my looping teenage handwriting and my mom’s elegant cursive.
When I found the journal, I noticed that I'd been the last to write, never passed it back, and then had evidently shoved it beneath the bed in some hurried cleaning. It felt like yet another thing I could guilt myself over, which was something I did a lot in those early days. But through that fog, an idea sprang from my desperate grief…
What if I just keep writing to her?
What if I write like she'll read these words someday, like I used to back then?
What if I write when I'm sad? When I'm happy? When there's a stupid story I would've only shared with her?
What if I just keep writing?
So I did.
I began filling the journal whenever I most missed her, and realized these were often during big life milestones. Graduating college, buying a house, struggling with a big decision...the many ways life continues after someone we love leaves.
When I got pregnant with my first child, I wrote to her and asked…what do I do now, mom? Is this how you felt? Why do I feel closer to you than ever before, but also a deeper pain in your absence?
From that free writing, I identified questions that helped me grieve, heal, and feel more connected to her and the life I was growing.
These prompts later became the Motherless Mother’s Pregnancy Journal.
But after pregnancy, I realized how many moments during the parenting journey I still think of my mom, wish I could call her, and wonder what she would say. I thought of her many stories that exist only in my memory, and how there are so many things I want to record about her life for my own kids.
I thought of that shared journal I still write in a few times per year, where I tell my mom about my kids’ milestones, how much I still miss her on my birthday, and how I understand her choices so much differently than before.
It’s not all easy writing…there are many difficult things I’m only now unpacking from my own childhood, and doing so in the absence of any actual conversation with my mom.
But writing to her throughout this journey has been powerful.
I knew that other mothers could benefit from this space…mothers who are further down the parenting path, who might not have considered this type of journaling before, and those with so much left unsaid to their own mom.
All of these thoughts led me to create The Motherless Mother’s Guided Journal: Prompts for Remembering and Connecting with Mom Throughout the Parenting Journey.
It’s a space to write to and about Mom, unpack how she impacted your parenting journey, record milestones you want to share with her, and lots of blank pages for the many moments you might just want to write to Mom.
It’s the portal I needed, and the one you might need too.
If you're a member of this club nobody wants to be in, if you’re a mom of any age or stage, and if you sometimes feel like you miss your mom so much you might burst, while other times feeling her presence so palpably it brings you to tears…
I made this journal for you.
Here is a space for the dance of grief and love.
What if just because a life ends, a relationship doesn't?
What if you can just keep writing?
Do you know someone who needs this?
Love,
Melissa
PS: This writing practice can apply to anyone or anything you’re grieving. Is there someone gone from your life whom you still long to connect with? Are there things left unsaid, questions you still have, or stories you want to share? Try lighting a candle, taking some deep breaths, and writing that person a letter.
Let me know how it goes.
A conscious parenting practice of mine is journaling to my someday-grown kids. I imagine some far-off future where they read my written entry (like I now do with my mom’s journaling pages) and it helps me to appreciate the present moment, while also considering how I want to be remembered. This helps me to actually (try to) be that version of myself today.
Consider writing down answers for your kids or asking questions of your family members in the Questions You’ll Wish You Asked journals. Find them here.
My oldest daughter and I holding one of the journals for sale at Beer’s Books in Sacramento
