Invisible Mothers: The Cost of Unheard Pain
In my last post, I spoke about the heavy, unbudging shadow of trauma and grief, the relentless crisis of a child’s and a mother’s nervous system when she feels utterly alone.
Today, we need to talk about one of the reasons as to why she is so alone. I understand this isn’t the full story, there are many complicating factors, however, we do need to stop dancing around this factor. In my clinic, over and over again, I hear the same devastating question wrapped in a thousand different stories:
Why are so many men so shit at connection?
I hear stories of women who have spelled out their desperation to their husbands in plain, agonizing English. “I am drowning. I need help. I need you.” And over and over, those husbands hear absolutely nothing. Or worse, they decide the solution to a hollowed-out, traumatized wife is that they just need to have more sex.
Women in this space become completely invisible. Slaves to their children, slaves to their husbands. Needless vessels of service.
And then, the inevitable happens. The wife asks for a divorce, and the husband is suddenly blindsided. He is shocked. But how the hell can he actually be shocked? He’s shocked because he never truly listened. He only ever tuned into the frequencies that served himself. His partner was a ghost in her own home, serving everyone until there was nothing left. It’s shocking. Except, when you look at the systemic cycle of how boys are raised in our culture, it isn't shocking at all.
As a society, we have a profound conditioning problem. Entitlement is woven into the way boys are treated from the time they are young. Culturally, boys are so often socialized to believe they are the center of the universe; their comfort is prioritized, their paths are cleared, and their emotional labour is done for them. They grow into men who have never actually been taught how to be an equal partner to a woman. They grow into men who expect the women in their lives to be automatic vessels of care, rather than human beings with their own limits.
We talk endlessly about setting boundaries with our partners as adults, but the real work is learning how to weave boundaries into the fabric of family life so they become natural to both set and respect.
It requires a united front from every adult in a child’s life.
Teaching boundaries means allowing children to see that the adults around them are human beings with their own needs, rights, and limits. When the adults in a home are supported in preserving their own humanity rather than being forced by circumstances to sacrifice every single shred of it- it role-models something vital for the next generation. It teaches children that everyone has a right to protect their own boundaries, and just as importantly, that no one is entitled to cross someone else's, including their own.
To the Mother in the Daily Grind
If you are reading this from the trenches of that exhaustion, walking on eggshells in a house that feels like a trap, I need you to hear me.
You are the embodiment of power. You are the bringer of life, light, grace, and beauty.
When you look into my eyes in the clinic, your gaze darts away, as if trying to hide the wreckage. But your eyes tell your story anyway. They hold the life and the love, the fatigue and the loss. The deep grief, and the stubborn hope. They show your strength, your inner resolve, your compassion, and your kindness. They hold the vibrant smiles of your past and the faint hope for your future. The pain, and the passion.
The flame and the spark you once carried inside you hasn’t died, it just rests like a shadow right now, fighting a daily battle to stay free of the wet tears testing its resolve.
Your smile, which used to be a free, vibrant piece of art on display, has become lines and shadows of patient endurance. Sometimes, you manage a gentle smile that reaches up toward your temples as you think of moments gone by or feel seen and heard. But then it falls short, held down yet again by the suffocating heaviness of yesterday’s and today’s sorrows. You take a busy breath, exhale heavily, and force yourself back to the so often brutal present.
As you leave the clinic and the weight of your world settles heavily back onto your shoulders, please know this: the world may keep spinning without you, but it will never, ever be a better place without you.
When you look at me, I am going to hold your gaze for a moment. I am holding onto hope for a lighter future for you, and I am holding space for you to take one deep, slow, safe breath.
I smile because I see your strength and your unbroken resolve. I smile so you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are not unseen. You are not unheard.
You are witnessed. And you are the definition of power.
I see you. I hear you.
