Mother's day is hardest if you're grieving your child.
By Tamara Sanon — Written on May 10, 2020
My condolences to any mother who has lost a child. Experiencing this kind of loss by far supersedes any other kind of grief.
Not many people can relate and understand how it feels to lose their child, so it's easy to understand how lonely that can feel — as if you’re the only one to ever weather this storm. But our hope is that with these condolence messages, we can pass along comforting words for a mother who has lost a child and help you feel a little less alone.
The passing of a child is unbearably heartbreaking — an experience you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.
Motherhood at its essence is all about sacrificing and doing things for the best interest of your child. Your child could be sixty years old with their kids, but you’ll still see them as your baby. There’s never an age when the loss of a child hurts less. In a mother’s eyes, their child’s significance doesn’t depend on age.
As a mom, you can’t help but want to shelter your children from the world and protect them in any way possible. It’s an instinctual desire to want to protect them that kicks in the day you find out you're expecting. Think about it — we physically shelter our children within our bodies for nine months, so that doesn’t just stop once we give birth.
The bond between a mother and her child lasts forever.
I know having a child pass away may feel as though you failed at the most important part of the mother, but you have not. Whether you lost your child because of a miscarriage, an illness, an accident, or any other tragedy — it is not your fault. You will always their mother.
The saddest part about bringing new life into this world is that you know that their will come a day for them to pass. The beginning of the circle of life is celebrated and filled with smiles, while the end is plagued with grief and sorrow.
As a mom, you hope your child will outlive you because one of your biggest fears is experiencing losing them. You know that that pain will be too great to bear. People love giving you advice on how to prepare for motherhood and pregnancy, but the advice of grieving and mourning the loss of a child is almost nonexistent.
People will share their condolences, share their favorite memories of your child, and might even bake you a casserole. These kind gestures come from a place of compassion, but compassion is not enough to fill the void of what you've lost.
None of this will bring your child back. You can’t reverse death, try as you might. All you can do is try to fix your life piece by piece when you feel the time is right.
Things will never go back to normal and I don’t think they should. How could things be normal again when you lost someone who played a significant part in your life? Death doesn’t erase the years of memories you once shared.
But life continues to go on after death. You’ll start to find a new normal. It’ll now consist of remembering your child, living with the memories. A mother never forgets her child.
If you're feeling lost or alone on Mother's day, take some time to read the comforting words for moms who have lost a child. Find hope in these quotes and if you need, reach out to a friend or family member who can help you through your most painful days.
1. “Sadly enough, the most painful goodbyes are the ones that are left unsaid and never explained.” ― Jonathan Harnisch
2. “Those we love and lose are always connected by heartstrings into infinity.” — Terri Guillemets
3. “Being an almost mother isn’t a thing. You have children, whether they made it here or not doesn’t take away from the fact they existed. They were yours, and they were loved fully if only for those small moments.” — Brittainy C. Cherry
4. “An angel in the book of life wrote down my baby's birth. Then whispered as she closed the book 'too beautiful for earth'.” ― Unknown
5. “The sorrow we feel when we lose a loved one is the price we pay to have had them in our lives.”― Rob Liano
6. “To lose a child is to lose a piece of yourself.” ― Dr. Burton Grebin
7. “There are words like ‘orphan’, ‘widow’ and ‘widower’ in all languages. But there is no word in any language to describe a parent who loses a child. How does one describe the pain of ‘ultimate bereavement’!”― Neena Verma
8. “Tears are the silent language of grief.” — Voltaire
9. “When a child is born, it is the mother's instinct to protect the baby. When a child dies, it is the mother's instinct to protect the memory.” ― Unknown
10. “We never truly get over a loss, but we can move forward and evolve from it.” — Elizabeth Berrien
11. “We do not "get over" a death. We learn to carry the grief and integrate the loss in our lives. In our hearts, we carry those who have died. We grieve and we love. We remember.” ― Nathalie Himmelrich
12. “Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.” — Emily Dickinson
13. “Think of your child, then, not as dead, but as living; not as a flower that has withered, but as one that is transplanted, and touched by a Divine hand, is blooming in richer colors and sweeter shades than those of earth. “ ― Richard Hooker
14. “A person's a person, no matter how small.” ― Dr. Seuss
15. “And can it be that in a world so full and busy the loss of one creature makes a void so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up!” — Charles Dickens
16. “Life is the only thing which can never be replaced when lost.” ― Lailah Gifty Akita
17. “There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower
18. “Mourning is one of the most profound human experiences that it is possible to have… The deep capacity to weep for the loss of a loved one and to continue to treasure the memory of that loss is one of our noblest human traits.” ― Shneidman
19. “I love you every day. And now I will miss you every day.” ― Mitch Albom
20. “Throughout my life, there were a few hard days. Days where even when I tried to be happy, my heart still cracked, and Mother’s Day was one of those. For others, it stood as a celebration. For me, it spoke of loss and failure.” ― Brittainy C. Cherry
21. “Some say you are too painful to remember. I say you are too precious to forget.” ― Unknown
22. “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.” ― Unknown
23. “Grief is the price we pay for love.” — Queen Elizabeth II
24. “Only through the significant loss of my loved ones have I truly begun to live. When their eyes closed, mine were opened.”― Angie Corbett-Kuiper
25. “A mother's grief is as timeless as her love.” ― Joanne Cacciatore
26. “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” — Washington Irving
27. “Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.” ― A.A.Milne
28. “When our children die, we drop them into the unknown, shuddering with fear. We know that they go out from us, and we stand, and pity, and wonder.”— Henry Ward Beecher
29. “There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.” ― Gandhi
30. "What cannot be said will be wept." — Sappho
31. “A life may last just for a moment, but memory can make that moment last forever.” ― Unknown
32. “I carried you every second of your life, and I will love you every second of mine.” ― Unknown
33. “The pain passes, but the beauty remains.” ― Pierre Auguste Renoir
34. “Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face – I know it’s an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.” ― Nicholas Sparks
35. ”Never. We never lose our loved ones. They accompany us; they don’t disappear from our lives. We are merely in different rooms.” ― Paulo Coelho
36. ”Grief is so human, and it hits everyone at one point or another, at least, in their lives. If you love, you will grieve, and that’s just given.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison
37. “Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.” ― Leo Tolstoy
38. ”And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.” ― Maya Angelou
39. ”I should know enough about loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone-you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence.” ― Alyson Noel
40. ”You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly-that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” ― Anne Lamott
41. ”To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.” — J.K. Rowling
42. ”It’s ok to feel sad sometimes. Little by little, you’ll feel better again.” ― Anonymous
43. ”Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.” ― José N. Harris
44. “Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.” ― Sarah Dessen
45. ”The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.” ― Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler
46. “Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle.” ― Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
47. “If you suppress grief too much, it can well redouble.” ― Moliere
48. ”Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.”― Megan Devine
49. ”No matter how bad your heart is broken, the world doesn’t stop for your grief.” ― Faraaz Kazi
50. “Grief starts to become indulgent, and it doesn't serve anyone, and it's painful. But if you transform it into remembrance, then you're magnifying the person you lost and also giving something of that person to other people, so they can experience something of that person.” ― Patti Smith
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Tamara Sanon is a writer with a passion for covering topics about health and wellness, lifestyle, astrology, and relationships.