When Mother’s Day Is Complicated: A Note for Black Girls Dealing With Estranged Grief
Trigger Warning: This reflection discusses family trauma, parental estrangement, emotional abuse, and gendered violence. Please take caution while reading. If this content feels too close, return to it only when you feel safe and grounded. If you do not wish to read further, that’s okay.
I’m not going to pretend that any holidays are easy on the soul for me, especially those centered on the celebration of parents. I’ve been on the internet since my early 20s, openly discussing family trauma and how it can weigh on our ability to see clearly. Apart from past reflections, what sets this moment—another internet candid convo—is the depth of honesty I now carry upon entering my 30s, and the wounds I no longer desire to hold.
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day have never been filled with joyful memories in my life’s journey. Instead, they are reminders of wounds I’m still healing, the weight of estrangement, and the way trauma doesn’t just fade sometimes—it grows, stretches, and evolves over time.
I wrote an essay about my estranged relationship with my father nearly ten years ago. I didn’t yet have the words to convey my reality. As a woman with more wisdom now, I️ understand I was living with parental wounds; I see that I didn’t have the vocabulary, the emotional insight, or the courage to unpack the complexity of my pain. At that time, I️ hadn’t begun therapy and used my writing to cope. I also ironically believed that if one parent—my mother—showed up to talk, listen, and appeared to be a little softer, then she ultimately was safer. I didn’t yet know that safety isn’t just about appearing softer. It’s about love that doesn’t choose compliance to harm over your peace or sense of worth.
Growing up, I endured relentless verbal and physical abuse from my father. He was a storm I never learned how to hide from. He was the first man to shatter my spirit and to make me question my worth. The memories of this date back to my teenage years, when my father said to me, “I️ wasn’t worth anything—that I would never survive without him unless I became a hoe.”
It wasn’t just harsh words. It was bruises, threats, and blows.
The lessons I learned in my most formative years were heavy ones. That sometimes, people who claim to love you carry their own version of pain. And that silence can sometimes feel like the safest response.
While in my younger years, I believed my mother was a place of refuge—a softer landing. But over time, I saw how she too became deeply woven into the harm I experienced. When it came to my father, she didn’t just watch. She often stood by, passive in the face of his abuse. There were many seasons when I needed her to stand up for me, and instead, what I felt she prioritized was holding onto a piece of a man rather than choosing a whole one who was intentionally about working on himself. Over 30 years of marriage, and safety through my lens was not the foundation. Her silence. Her passivity. They left wounds just as deep as the violence itself.
I still remember the day my father pointed a gun at me when I was a teen. It wasn’t during an argument or dramatic confrontation. I was simply walking up the stairs to use the bathroom. He was in his room, acting out a scenario only he understood. As I reached the top step, he lifted a rifle, charged it, and aimed it directly at me. I froze, stuck, and eventually found my way back downstairs.
When I told my mother what happened, she responded with disbelief. She asked him plainly, “Did you point that gun at her?” Like anything he would do, he denied it. And like always, there was no confrontation and no further discussion.
It would only take a few years before my mother would find herself threatened with that same gun. In the middle of an argument, my father told her he would blow her “fucking head off.” And still, we walked on eggshells. His accountability? Temporary good behavior followed by yet another cycle of harm. His violence was never named aloud in any way that offered proper safety or change.
In the mind of my younger self, I experienced him as hot, then cold. That unpredictability defined my home.
With time, I came to understand that both of my parents were broken children raising children. They had never healed from their childhood wounds. My father’s rage was a symptom of his unresolved suffering. My mother’s silence and denial were shaped by her own traumas and conditioning. She wasn’t unaware of the patterns—she was surviving them too.
At the end of my twenties, a conversation with my mother revealed many uncomfortable truths about her marriage. She too experienced physical violence at the hands of my father. The violence I experienced with him was not new—it had simply just become normal.
As a young adult, I tried to fix things that weren’t mine to repair. I tried to patch the cracks. I believed I could heal what I hadn’t broken. But healing doesn’t work like that. You can’t save what you are not required to save. There is not enough capacity. And as a child, it was never my job to carry my parents’ pain or to be the adult they needed.
Eventually, I chose distance for my safety and my sanity. I went no-contact with my father because he was not safe—not for me, not for her, not for any of his children. My relationship with my mother overtime has drastically shifted in decline as result of this decision.
In the Black community, we are often taught to protect family, even when it costs us everything. We keep secrets. We smile for photos. We normalize abuse and say, “That’s just how they are.” But that silence? That forced masking? It’s killing us. We’re afraid to speak the truth about the parents who broke us, while still being expected to set a table for them. And that conflict—of—grief, guilt, and survival—sits heavy during holidays.
For this season of my life, around Mother’s Day, I am filled with mourning. It’s about the little girl who cringes at the small, sweet things she longed for as a child and remembers what she received instead. It’s about the masking—the way I watched safety disappear into survival, the way love became tangled with fear.
Over the years, I’ve met so many women who tell variations of this same story: women who stayed silent, smiled through pain, convinced themselves that chaos was love, mothered their mothers, and had to mother themselves.
This is not a list of grievances. That list belongs to the book I’m still writing. This is a truth offering.
To the women navigating complicated family dynamics, the daughters who love from afar, and the ones who chose distance and called it peace—I see you. On days marked by remembrance and celebration, it’s okay to feel the weight.
That, too, is healing.
That, too, is self-love.
This essay was written by Charlisa Goodlet, a passionate creative dedicated to dismantling the status quo and promoting equity for Black individuals. Her work focuses on improving community lives, advocating for reparations, and developing impactful anti-poverty initiatives. By day, she's a policy enthusiast researching and analyzing policies; by night, she cultivates conversations on BROKE BLACK BOUGIE (BBB) a space dedicated to Black women existing in a world that doesn’t make room for us, yet, we still find ways to reclaim our space. She is the founder of BBB.
