I didn't grow up with my mother, and so losing her for real was like, some sort of latent childhood, some sort of unresolved issue. When she left for real, it was sort of like, I was done.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I had to go on without my mother, even though I was suffering terribly, grieving her.
During my grief, I realised there was nothing I could do for my mother, but I did have a child.
I didn't start grieving for my mother properly until I was maybe 16.
The first thing I tried to do in the months after losing my mother was to write a poem. I found myself turning to poetry in the way so many people do - to make sense of losses. And I wrote pretty bad poems about it. But it did feel that the poem was the only place that could hold this grief.
My whole life sort of ended when my mom died.
I lost my mother when I was very young, and my father when I was in college.
Mother had committed me for life. This is where I felt betrayed the most.
As a child I had dealt with a lot of loss and grief. I was constantly losing my parents, losing my home, constantly moving around, living with this stranger, that stepfather, or whatever.
My mother left behind three daughters when she went to America and started a new life. I certainly felt abandoned when my father died of a brain tumour; I felt he had abandoned me to this terrible, volatile mother and I had no protection.
There's a part of me that never felt my mother abandoned me. I always felt that she did the right thing.