Living Without Mom

This Sunday, many sons and daughters did something special for their moms. Maybe they made or bought a card. Maybe they took their moms to brunch or the movies. But not everyone celebrates Mother's Day. In 1992, 90,000 American women between the ages of 25 and 54 died and 125,000 kids under 18 were left motherless. Mother's Day for them and for the millions of adults whose mothers are dead is a reminder that they are alone in ways you can't ever imagine.

Lisa's mom had clinical depression when Lisa was 12. After many attempts, her mother succeeded in killing herself when Lisa was 15. Lisa emotionally withdrew and became, in every way, an adult -- a self-sufficient person with her emotions and her life under tight control.

But the loss, she says, comes back to her at those points in her life when a mother would be expected to be around: graduation, birthdays, holidays. She feels she became "stuck" at the age the death occurred, that she hadn't had a chance to learn the "secrets a mom teaches a daughter."

Lisa threw herself into her ballet classes, which not only occupied her physically and mentally, but gave her an emotional outlet as well. "What saved me was to have something important in my life where adults who knew me were available to me."

Missing In Action

Kids can lose their mothers in ways other than death. Mary's mom was sick and in the hospital for a year when Mary was 12, which in some ways was worse than a death, she says, because there was not the finality and publicity of a funeral to unite the community with the grieving family.

Mary was alone, her mother suddenly gone with no one in her place. Mary stole from her father's wallet and shoplifted to get attention, but nobody noticed. She wasn't doing well in school, so she was put back a year, which made her even more sad because her friends moved on to the next grade and high school. When Mary's mother returned, things got better. But Mary always feared her mother would again abandon her or die, always remembering that terrifying year when her mother disappeared.

Illness isn't the only way a mom can be "lost." Some mom's just don't care about their children. Take 16-year-old Deena. Her mom did drugs while she was pregnant with Deena and continued to float from abusive relationship to abusive relationship and drug addiction to drug addiction, repeating the pattern she experienced with her own mother. Deena rarely saw her mom because her mom was always away partying and trying to score drugs. Deena finally left home when she was 15 -- her mom was dead inside and caused only pain for Deena.

How To Heal

Dealing with the loss is key, says Carol Weston, author of "Girltalk" and "Private and Personal," a book that deals with issues facing teen girls. Weston points out that the loss of a parent, especially your mom, is probably the worst thing you are going to have to go through for a long time, and you are allowed to be sad about it for as long as you need. She recommends a few survival techniques for healing:

Reach out. Your dad, aunt, grandparent, sibling, guidance counselor, school nurse, teacher, neighbor, friend's mom -- there will be somebody who will want to talk with you about your feelings. You might think that these people don't want to be reminded of the death or problems, but odds are they would welcome the chance to talk and cry with you.

Express it. Keep a journal. Write poems. Draw, sing, dance, perform. Try something -- anything -- that lets you express your feelings. Getting them out in the open is a good way to see them more clearly and deal with them coherently.

Forgive yourself. You're going to feel jealous of your friends who still have mothers or mothers who care about them. That's normal. You're going to be angry at your mom for leaving you. That's normal, too. You have to let yourself feel what you're feeling -- don't waste time and energy on the guilt that says you're a bad person to be jealous of a mother's love or angry with the dead. You're allowed to be happy again, but it's normal to feel guilty for being happy, too. Remember, you owe it to yourself to move on, to embrace life.

The loss, says Lisa, never goes away, but you can find ways to ease it. Her father, she says, became a more sensitive and open person to compensate for the lack of a mother. When she married, her mother-in-law filled many of the roles her own mother would have performed. She is still motherless, but she is determined not to be helpless.