Grief doesn’t only change who we lose—it changes who we become. A trauma therapist reflects on losing her mother to breast cancer and what healing has taught her about identity, love, and resilience.

By Keisha Jones, MSW, LGSW, LMSW

People often assume grief begins the day someone dies.

Mine didn’t.

It began when I was fifteen years old.

Only a few months earlier, my maternal grandmother had passed away. Before my family had time to fully grieve one loss, my mother sat me down and told me she had breast cancer.

I don’t remember exactly what she said.

I remember what I didn’t say.

Nothing.

I wish I could tell you I cried.

I didn’t.

I didn’t ask questions.

I didn’t scream.

I simply stopped talking.

Looking back, I recognize it as selective mutism—a survival response that had protected me throughout childhood whenever life felt too overwhelming. My body knew how to survive long before it knew how to grieve.

Today, as both a trauma therapist and someone who has done her own healing, I understand that reaction differently.

When our nervous system perceives overwhelming threat, many people don’t fight or flee.

They freeze.

Sometimes trauma sounds like sobbing.

Sometimes it sounds like silence.

Inside my mind, however, one thought repeated over and over:

“My mom is going to die.”

She didn’t.

Not then.

She chose a lumpectomy because she feared losing her breast. As her daughter, I still catch myself wondering whether a different decision would have changed the outcome. I also remember complications after her surgery, including a draining tube that was never placed, making an already difficult recovery even harder.

I’ve learned those questions are part of grief’s attempt to negotiate with the past.

Researchers describe this as counterfactual thinking—our mind’s attempt to imagine different outcomes after a significant loss. It often sounds like “What if we had caught it sooner?” or “If only we had made a different decision.”These thoughts are common, understandable, and deeply human.

Watching My Mother Fight

After surgery came radiation.

I watched my mother’s skin darken until it looked almost black.

As a teenager, I didn’t understand radiation burns.

I only understood that my mother was hurting.

Every day she carefully rubbed shea butter onto her skin.

Slowly, her skin began to heal.

At fifteen, I thought I was watching someone recover from cancer treatment.

Looking back, I realize I was witnessing resilience.

She wasn’t simply healing physically.

She was teaching me, without ever saying the words, what perseverance looked like.

Eventually, she entered remission.

For five years, life felt almost normal again.

Almost.

Cancer has a way of teaching families never to fully exhale.

Even in remission, part of you is always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Living With Anticipatory Grief

Five years later, the cancer returned.

This time, there would be no remission.

For the next two years, I watched my mother fight again.

One chemotherapy treatment caused a severe allergic reaction.

Her skin blistered.

She could barely move.

I brushed her teeth.

I bathed her.

I helped care for the woman who had spent my entire life caring for me.

I remember thinking every day that week would be her last.

When she survived, every additional day felt like borrowed time.

Looking back, I realize I had already begun grieving long before she died.

Researchers call this anticipatory grief—the grief that begins while someone you love is still alive. Families living with life-limiting illnesses often cycle through hope, fear, relief, uncertainty, and despair long before death occurs.

So when my mother decided she was ready for hospice, caring for her wasn’t a difficult decision.

It was an honor.

She had cared for me my entire life.

Now it was my turn to care for her.

I Didn’t Just Lose My Mother—I Lost My Safe Place

My mother wasn’t simply my parent.

She was my first secure attachment.

She was the person I called when something exciting happened.

The person I called when something terrible happened.

The person I called when nothing happened at all.

By the time I reached adulthood, I talked to her two or three times every day.

Somewhere during her second battle with cancer, I realized she wouldn’t always be there.

I moved in with my former partner because I knew I needed to learn how to stand on my own.

In many ways, that decision softened the practical realities of losing my mother.

It did nothing to soften the emotional ones.

When she died, I didn’t just lose a parent.

I lost the person who made the world feel safe.

As therapists, we often describe parents as our first secure base. They become the people we instinctively turn toward for comfort, guidance, and reassurance. Losing that relationship in young adulthood can feel like losing the very place where we learned who we were. Research suggests that parental loss during this developmental stage can interrupt identity formation, emotional regulation, relationships, and one’s sense of future.

For years, I believed I was grieving my mother.

Eventually, I realized I was also grieving the version of myself that only existed in relationship with her.

Who was I without the person who had known me my entire life?

What did I enjoy?

What kind of life did I want to build?

What values did I want to carry forward?

Those questions became just as painful as the loss itself.

The Grief No One Could See

People often imagined I was handling everything well.

They called me strong.

Inside, I felt anything but strong.

For years, I barely cried.

Not because I wasn’t devastated.

Because I couldn’t afford to fall apart.

If I stopped holding everything together, I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to put myself back together again.

Nearly two years later, everything I had worked so hard to contain finally surfaced.

Grief had simply been waiting for my nervous system to believe it was safe enough to feel.

It took years to understand that suppressing grief doesn’t eliminate it.

Sometimes it simply postpones it.

Research shows that grief affects far more than our emotions. It can influence our sleep, physical health, concentration, relationships, identity, and ability to imagine a meaningful future.

The Guilt I Carried

One regret stayed with me for years.

My mother never got to see me graduate from college.

I wanted so badly to hand her that diploma.

To thank her for every sacrifice she made.

For a long time, guilt became another layer of my grief.

Therapy eventually helped me see something I couldn’t recognize then.

My mother didn’t need to witness the ceremony to know who I was becoming.

She had already helped build the woman who would walk across that stage.

Therapy Helped Me Find Myself Again

When I finally sat across from my own therapist, I expected to talk about grief.

Instead, I began rediscovering myself.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helped me recognize how my thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and body constantly influenced one another.

Narrative Therapy invited me to ask a different question.

Who are you becoming because of this loss?

That question changed my life.

Instead of trying to move on from my mother, I learned how to move forward while carrying her with me.

Research suggests that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help reduce depressive grief symptoms by addressing unhelpful thinking patterns, while Narrative Therapy supports healing by helping people reconstruct meaning and integrate loss into their life story. Together, these approaches offer a compassionate and evidence-based framework for grief recovery.

The Peace I Wish She Had Known

One of the hardest parts of grief isn’t only losing the person you love.

It’s imagining the life you wish they could have lived.

My mother deserved peace.

She deserved relationships that nurtured her.

She deserved to experience the kind of emotional safety that allows a person to exhale.

I wish she had known the peace I know today.

I wish she had experienced a relationship built on mutual respect, laughter, and emotional safety.

I wish she had known what it felt like to stop surviving and simply live.

I can’t give her those experiences now.

But I can honor her by refusing to settle for anything less.

Every healthy boundary I set…

Every relationship rooted in respect…

Every adventure I choose instead of fear…

Every moment I choose peace over chaos…

Every generational pattern I refuse to repeat…

I am, in many ways, continuing her story.

She also lives in smaller ways.

In my love of fashion.

In my sense of humor.

Sometimes I’ll hear myself say something in exactly the way she would have said it—warm, funny, just a little inappropriate, and somehow impossible to take offense to because she always delivered it with so much love.

People don’t disappear when they die.

Sometimes they continue living through the values they leave behind.

Healing Didn’t Mean Leaving Her Behind

I used to think grief was something we eventually finished.

Now I think grief is something we grow around.

My mother’s absence has never become smaller.

My life has simply become bigger.

There are still days when I hear a joke and instinctively reach for my phone before remembering she isn’t there to answer.

There are still milestones I wish I could share with her.

There are still tears that arrive without warning.

But there is also laughter.

There is purpose.

There is love.

There is healing.

Becoming a therapist didn’t happen in spite of losing my mother.

It happened, in many ways, because of her.

Every client who walks into my office carrying grief reminds me of something I now know to be true.

Love never asks us to forget.

Healing simply teaches us new ways to carry it.

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References

Attig, T., & Kalischuk, R. G. (1997). How we grieve: Relearning the world. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, 29(4), 95–99.

Currier, J. M., Holland, J. M., & Neimeyer, R. A. (2010). Do CBT-based interventions alleviate distress following bereavement? A review of the current evidence. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy, 3(1), 77–93. https://doi.org/10.1521/ijct.2010.3.1.77

Neimeyer, R. A. (1999). Narrative strategies in grief therapy. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 12(1), 65–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/107205399266226

Patterson, P., & Rangganadhan, A. (2010). Losing a parent to cancer: A preliminary investigation into the needs of adolescents and young adults. Palliative & Supportive Care, 8(3), 255–265. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1478951510000052

Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (2010). The dual process model of coping with bereavement: A decade on. OMEGA – Journal of Death and Dying, 61(4), 273–289. https://doi.org/10.2190/OM.61.4.b

This article draws on my graduate research examining grief interventions for young adults who have lost a parent to cancer, as well as my personal experience as both a daughter and a trauma therapist.