{"id":738632,"date":"2025-11-26T00:02:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T21:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=738632"},"modified":"2025-11-26T00:02:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T21:02:10","slug":"i-wasnt-waiting-to-feel-ready-for-motherhood-i-was-waiting-for-my-mom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=738632","title":{"rendered":"I Wasn\u2019t Waiting to Feel Ready for Motherhood. I Was Waiting for My Mom."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
Opinion<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

I Wasn\u2019t Waiting to Feel Ready for Motherhood. I Was Waiting for My Mom.<\/h1>\n
By <\/span> Lauren Boswell <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

November 25, 2025<\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  • \n
  • \n
  • \n
  • <\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
    \n
    \n
    <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
    \n
    \n
    Photo: Mikulas Galanda, Heritage Images\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
    \n
    \n
    \n
    \n
    \n
    \n
    \n

    When my friends began having children, I noticed a pattern. Their mothers, it seemed, were always there: a phone call away for advice, on a plane before the due date, instinctively knowing how and when to help as soon as the baby arrived. They folded tiny onesies and took shifts rocking newborns to sleep, somehow finding that perfect bounce new parents spend weeks trying to learn while my friends, their daughters, took showers. The handoff between generations looked seamless, almost rehearsed.<\/p>\n

    The defining role of my early adulthood was being my mother\u2019s primary caregiver, until I lost her to cancer when I was 26. I filled pillboxes, scheduled appointments, and rushed home from my job in the city to make it to her blood transfusions. When she died, I grieved the obvious things\u2014her empty chair at family dinners, the quiet where our nightly phone calls once were, and the fact that she\u2019d never help me choose a wedding dress.<\/p>\n

    I knew having a baby without her would be hard; I\u2019d thought about it a lot while she was sick. But I didn\u2019t realize how profoundly her absence would shape my path to motherhood.<\/p>\n

    At first, I told myself I wasn\u2019t ready for kids. My husband and I had time, I reasoned. We could travel, indulge in slow weekends, and enjoy stretches where no one needed anything from us. But beneath those excuses was a quieter fear that I didn\u2019t share with many: How could I step into motherhood without the person who was supposed to help me through it?<\/em> If I didn\u2019t have her, did I even want it at all?<\/p>\n

    For a long time, I stayed suspended in the in-between, too uncertain to move forward, too scared to stay still. But avoidance was its own kind of grief, and it breaks my heart a little to realize I wasn\u2019t waiting to feel ready\u2014I was just waiting for my mom.<\/p>\n

    \n
    \n
    \"Image<\/span><\/div>\n
    Photo: Courtesy of the author<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

    I kept most of my feelings to myself, not really by choice, but because I didn\u2019t yet have the language for them. Grief can be profoundly private, convincing you that what you\u2019re feeling is yours alone. But it isn\u2019t. Women who lose their mothers young often experience a form of anticipatory grief, where you\u2019re not just mourning the parent you lost, but also the guidance from mom that you\u2019ll never receive.<\/p>\n

    That grief can, in turn, shape the way that daughters approach motherhood. As Hope Edelman writes in her 1994 book Motherless Daughters<\/em>, \u201cSome individuals might choose to be childfree as a way to cope with grief.\u2026 Others may feel a strong urge to have children to honor their mother\u2019s memory.\u201d I had been both at once, paralyzed by grief and then propelled by it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

    \n
    \n
    \n
    \n

    It took years, but eventually my grief softened. It would never leave, but it grew quieter and I started to understand that moving forward didn\u2019t mean leaving her behind. I could carry my mom\u2019s presence into the family my husband and I hoped to create.<\/p>\n

    When our son was born, I cried not just because he was here, but because she wasn\u2019t. The grief of that truth was searing. But as the days unfolded, I found myself mothering in ways I recognized; in the rhythm of my voice as I soothed him, in the way I tucked his blanket, and in the fierce protectiveness that seemed to arrive out of nowhere.<\/p>\n

    There are still moments that break me open\u2014watching friends\u2019 moms swoop in to babysit, or overhearing them swap stories about how their moms saved them in those blurry newborn weeks. My mom isn\u2019t here to cradle my child, but he\u2019ll know her in other ways: in the garden we tend, in her famous cookie recipes, in the photos on his bedroom wall, in the stories that make her real to him. Now that he can talk, he tells me that, \u201cMommy\u2019s mommy, Omi, lives in the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The truth is, none of us are doing this with all the support we wish we had. A 2024 Ohio State University\u00a0survey found that 66% of parents feel lonely and 38% of them \u201cfeel they have no one to support them.\u201d Modern parenting can feel isolating, with frayed community networks and the quiet comparison of social media. Some of us are missing mothers, some partners, some communities. All of us are cobbling together what we need, hoping it\u2019s enough.<\/p>\n

    Motherhood without a mother isn\u2019t lesser; it just looks different. I\u2019m supported by my incredible husband; I lean on friends, my extraordinary dad, and the endless sprawl of the internet; and I find reassurance from within. We like to imagine motherhood as a continuum\u2014a passing of wisdom from one generation to the next. When that chain is broken, it feels like building something without a blueprint. But absence, I\u2019ve found, can be its own kind of teacher. In the constant awareness of what\u2019s missing, I\u2019ve learned to cherish what\u2019s here\u2014to hold close what matters, and to remember just how fragile and fleeting all of this is. My mom may never meet my son, but her fingerprints are all over the way I mother him\u2014and how lucky is he for that?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

    Source URL: http:\/\/vogue.com\/article\/waiting-to-feel-ready-for-motherhood-waiting-for-my-mom<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Opinion I Wasn\u2019t Waiting to Feel Ready for Motherhood. I Was Waiting for My Mom. By Lauren Boswell November 25, 2025 Photo: Mikulas Galanda, Heritage Images\/Getty Images When my friends began having children, I noticed a pattern. Their mothers, it seemed, were always there: a phone call away for advice, on a plane before the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":738633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-738632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-vogue-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=738632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/738633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=738632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=738632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=738632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}