05/09/2026
When I immigrated to the U.S. at age 9, I didn’t realize that meant the end of my childhood with my mom. It wasn’t supposed to be that way — it kind of “just happened.”
She would visit us every 6 months, and we would visit during long holidays — but after 9 years of this, my parents’ marriage essentially fell apart.
On Mother’s Day, my sister and I would fax cards to my mom overseas…and celebrate my dad, who had become the only parent physically raising us.
When my mom finally moved to the States more than a decade later, she tried to be in my life again. She helped support me through my first year of graduate school, and would invite my husband and me over for home-cooked meals.
She tried to be a mom to me, always encouraging me in my art and creative endeavors.
The last Mother’s Day, 19 years ago, was just 2 weeks before she passed away. She was too weak to eat, and in so much pain she could hardly speak.
We didn’t know she had cancer until she was rushed to the hospital. 💔
As I’ve grieved her death, I have also been grieving the parts of childhood that I didn’t get to have with her. The sense of abandonment I felt as an even younger child (my aunt raised me from birth to age 3) has taken me the last couple of years to recognize and begin healing from.
It’s taken me years to understand how those wounds followed me into motherhood — how I projected parts of my own childhood onto my children without even realizing it.
This Mother’s Day feels different. I feel more whole — as though I am finally healed, or almost healed. ❤️🩹
I no longer feel like I have to overcompensate for what I didn’t receive as a child, or carry the weight of trying to “fix” the past through my own motherhood.
If this Mother’s Day feels complicated to you, or if you’re still grieving in some way, you are not alone. 🤍🌹
