0
Share on bsky
View this post on Instagram
A Family Tree with a Broken Trunk
I thought I was ready to be a parent.
Before my son was born, I braced myself for sleepless nights and the wild swirl of new love and uncertainty. I devoured every parenting book, sought advice from seasoned mothers, carefully chose his healthcare providers, and handpicked every toy with deliberate care. I even braced for the infamous 3 a.m. blowouts, though I never imagined there could be so much poop.
But no amount of preparation could hold the weight of grief that rose within me, a quiet, unexpected tide beneath the roaring waves of excitement. Yes, I thought I was ready for parenthood.
I did not think about the massive reality that I had no father to give me advice, no mother to rock my newborn so I could try to get an hour of uninterrupted sleep.
My son was born into love, but not into legacy. He came into the world as a fresh green leaf on a family tree with a fractured trunk, tethered to a tender, splintered branch that still managed to bloom. Somehow, despite the damage, there is life.
He is a toddler now, and when people look at him, they always say, “He looks so much like his Will.”—his father.
But when I look at him, I see someone else entirely gazing back at me, someone I’ve been longing to see for years.
I see my mother.
Blue eyes, clear and inviting. Flaxen hair that turns white in the sun just the way hers did. Heart-shaped lips I’ve seen passed down for three generations, from her, to me, to him, which I kissed first as a daughter and later as a mother. And that little snag in his teeth that it catches me off guard every time. It’s mine. It was hers. A tiny imperfection that feels a memory returned to me, smooth and familiar, like a face I’ve missed in dreams.
Even his upturned nose stirs something primordial in me. It’s not just resemblance; it’s resurrection as memory made flesh. It’s the ache of searching for her and the awe of finding her again, impossibly, in him—and knowing that paradoxically, he is indeed his own person.
I respond in a matter-of-fact tone, “Actually, he looks like my mother.”
And people respond with a shrug: “Well, I never met her, so…”
The conversation trails off awkwardly. But I see her. Even if no one else does.
I don’t see my father in him, at least not at first glance. But in quieter moments, I notice things. My son has an adoration for the wild world. Of course, I know babies are curious about everything. But this is different. He lingers with wonder in the presence of a single ripple in a puddle. He studies the croak of a frog with the concentration of a monk. He learns more from the way sunlight dances through beech leaves than anything on a screen, even Ms. Rachel. He drinks in nature like it’s nourishment. He converses with flowers.
And it was my father who taught me to love the More-than-Human World (and lovingly called me Nature Girl), out on our canoe as we studied countless dragonflies drenched in jewel tones, took in how a wood duck trails silently through the cattails, and marveled at how blue flag irises thrive in murky depths.
This is how lineage shows up for me now: in traits, in echoes, in instincts that leap across generations even when the people are no longer here to witness it. In a few photographs. In stories and memories.
Of course, I do know that my son is the legacy of two families. He does have elements from his father and his paternal grandparents. I do notice his paternal grandmother’s traits threaded into him. There’s a gentleness he carries, an instinctive kindness toward every living thing, as if he already understands that it’s braver to be tender. Even when it would be easier to crush an ant just to see what happens, he chooses care. That tenderness is part of her, and his father, and even me in some way, passed down to him.
He also has an obsession with cars. That is all solely his paternal grandfather. Me? As far as I am concerned, cars are only for transportation. I find nothing appealing about them otherwise, and my husband has a casual interest at best.
But even still…
What I have in parenthood isn’t quite a village, not in the way people mean when they say “it takes one.” Yes, my in-laws and close friends have been generous and supportive. Exceptional, even. My mother-in-law in some ways has even taken on the weight of what would normally be reserved for a mother’s mother, by being the one who accepted the early morning phone calls when I was riddled with postpartum depression. But beneath their warmth lingers a chill in my bones, a hollow longing that no amount of support can fill. It’s the ache of absence. The weight of grief. The shape of a void I carry, always.
This is the quiet, often unspoken experience shared by many of us, those who fall under the umbrella of a phenomenon some clinicians call the adult orphan syndrome. It is a term with substantial weight, meaningful, but not without controversy. When I first came across it in a book aptly titled The Adult Orphan, I mentioned it in a Facebook group for fellow psychotherapists, curious if others had used it with clients. Almost immediately, someone lashed out, calling it “tone-deaf and insulting” to children—as in minors—who’ve lost their parents. I found myself on the defense mode, having to explain I did not dub the term.
But the truth is, well…what else can we call this phenomenon? It’s strange, isn’t it? For something so inevitable (most of us will outlive our parents) there’s no name for the grief that comes with it. Think about it: we have “widow” and “widower” for those who lose a spouse. In Sanskrit, there’s “vilomah”—”against the natural order”—a word for parents who lose a child. But there is no word for adults without parents.
Maybe because it’s expected. Perhaps because it’s normal.
But let me tell you, normal doesn’t mean painless. It certainly doesn’t make it any easier when it happens too soon. Furthermore, it is not normal for a young adult to lose both parents. And when it happens, the silence around it can make the grief feel even heavier and more isolating.
Above all, when those without parents become parents themselves, the grief doesn’t fade—it deepens, soaking into the psyche like ink into paper, coloring everything with a richer, more complicated hue.
The absence takes on its own presence. It hums beneath ordinary moments, such as when the pasta is boiling over, the cat threatens your toddler with its claws, you’re scrubbing out stubborn stains, and your boss is calling you after-hours, all while wondering: How did my mother ever do this?
The absence is there when you are trying to rush your son out the door to his baseball game, when a service light flashes on your dashboard but you have no idea what it means, and you think, “Dad would know. I’ll call him and ask—oh, wait. I can’t.” and you gaze at the steering wheel, dissociated, still parked.
It hums some more when you’re sick, but you have to drag yourself out of bed anyway because your partner already left for work, so there is no one else who can help.
Sometimes the hum swells into a voice, insistent, impossible to ignore, echoing through the quiet with the weight of everything unsaid. Like when the daycare calls to say your child needs to be picked up immediately because he suddenly has a rash, but you’re an hour away in a business meeting, and your “emergency contacts” list is blank. Immediately, you consider asking the stay-at-home mom who lives next door, but it feels too awkward because you barely know her. Then it hits you, all at once: there’s no one to call. And you have no idea what the hell to do.
Then there are those times the absence doesn’t just hum or vocalize—it howls. It thunders sharply when you choose your baby’s name, when your son asks where your mother went, when your daughter comes home in tears after learning her classmates have two grandfathers and she only has one. It’s not just grief—it’s a wail, raw and guttural, an ugly cry to heaven.
This grief can take many shapes—depression, anxiety, guilt, or the slow burn of feeling unparented while trying to parent. It often leads to a kind of hyper-independence that appears strong on the outside but feels fragile underneath. Some of us over-function, praised for our resilience when, in truth, we’re outrunning our sorrow. Others under-function, becoming the ones people whisper about with concern.
However, most of us grieve silently, convinced that no one wants to hear how lonely it is to raise a child without the very people who once raised us. We worry we would sound dramatic if we said it is like hiking through life without a compass, fearful and disoriented.
I often wonder what kind of mother I might have been if I still had a mother. I wonder if I’d be less afraid, less self-critical, more confident. Maybe more willing to make mistakes. I wonder what kind of grandmother my mom would have been, what stories and knowledge my dad would have passed down as a grandfather. I reflect on what traditions we would have kept.
Since I do not have the answers to these questions, I find myself having to invent a lineage. I build new rituals, transform my memories into stories to tell my son about people he’ll never meet, and try to piece together who I am without the people who first made me. In doing so, I am healing something ancestral. I am mothering through grief. I am showing my child how we love, even in absence. I am rewriting the meaning of family.
If you’re a young parent who lost your own parents too soon, please know this: your grief is real, and it is allowed to take up space, even in the midst of your joy. You’re not damaged. You’re doing something unimaginably hard. And you’re not alone.
You are the legacy now.
You have created and nurtured. You are the branch in the family tree strong with the leaves of new life. And that is both a burden and a profound act of love.
~
This account does not have permission to comment on Elephant Journal.
Contact support with questions.