The Kind of Grief No One Talks About

As soon as I became a mother, something in me changed.

I became extremely protective. I loved my child in a way I didn’t even know was possible. A beautiful, perfect little girl. And I know now that when I looked at her, I was also seeing something else… I was seeing myself. The little girl I used to be. The one who felt alone.

Only this time, it was different.

She had me. She had us. She had protection.

My dad loved her. He was the proudest grandfather. He showed her pictures to everyone, talked about how she spoke three languages at the age of three, how cheeky and funny she was, how she had her own little personality and boundaries. He loved telling people how she would ask him to leave the room when she was getting ready to sleep.

And sometimes, I felt like he was seeing in her everything he wished he had seen in me.

The difference was… she was raised by me.

I don’t say this to blame. I know my parents didn’t have the tools. They came from families where feelings were not spoken about, where there was pain, silence, and things that were never processed. They grew up in a different world. A harder one. And I believe they loved me in the only way they knew how.

But it didn’t feel like love.

I was born with a hip condition, and I think from that moment something shifted. I think I started life already as a disappointment. There were very few hugs, no real cuddles, no “I love you”. There was emotional blackmail, guilt, and when I was “bad”, my dad would hit me.

If I argued with my mum, he hit me. If I argued with him, he hit me.

My mum never stood up for me.

Not once.

And what stayed with me the most wasn’t even the hitting. It was the feeling that I was never enough. Not pretty enough, not smart enough, not hardworking enough. I never knew what “enough” even looked like. I only knew that I wasn’t it.

And the confusing part was that sometimes it was good. We could sit, talk, laugh. I could feel okay around them. But it never lasted. It never felt safe for long.

I always felt alone. Even in my own family.

When I met my husband, something shifted again. For the first time, I felt protected. We had our struggles like every couple, especially in the beginning, but there was something steady there.

He stayed.

He kept saying he loved me, and I didn’t understand why.

I genuinely thought that one day he would wake up, laugh, and tell me it was all a joke. Eight years later, he is still here... still loving me.... still protecting me.

But when my child was born, things with my dad became harder, he would make comments that triggered something deep in me.

About my child, about how I was raising her, about what I should be doing differently. It felt like I could never just be.

So I went to therapy, I wanted to stop the constant tension,

I wanted to be a good mum, I wanted to make sure I didn’t pass this on.

For a while, things got better, we had an okay relationship, but something wasn’t right.

Dad was tired, not just tired… drained. When I looked at other people his age, they were still full of life.

He wasn’t. I kept saying something was wrong. I didn’t know what, but I could feel it.

And then one day, when we were home celebrating my daughter’s birthday, I had this quiet thought… he will die soon.

I didn’t say it out loud but it stayed with me.

Nine months later, he was gone.

One day we were talking on the phone, just normal conversations, nothing special. The next morning, he had a stroke. The first Sunday of Advent we spoke. The next Sunday, he was in a coffin. And the week after, he was in the ground.

There was no time to prepare. No time to understand. Just… gone.

I grew up in that moment.

And even now, I still find myself arguing with him in my dreams. I don’t want to, but I do.

I miss him. I miss the fun version of him. The conversations, the stories, the things he could have shared with my child.

And this is the part that is hard to say out loud… I’m glad it was quick.

For him.

Because I know what the other version could have been. Illness, suffering, losing himself slowly. He didn’t have to go through that. And for that, I feel relief.

For a long time, I kept asking why. Why now, why like this, why him. It felt like my whole world collapsed. And in a way, it did.

But slowly, something else started to happen.

I started to feel lighter.

And that came with a lot of guilt.

Because the voice in my head started to fade. The one that told me I wasn’t good enough. The one that made me feel like I had to prove myself just by existing. The one that questioned everything I did.

That pressure started to lift.

And I realised something that is very difficult to admit.

I wasn’t just grieving my father. I was also carrying the weight of needing his approval.

And when he was gone… that weight disappeared too.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t love him. It doesn’t mean I don’t miss him. It just means that both things can exist at the same time.

Grief and relief.

And maybe this is the part no one talks about, because it feels wrong. Because it feels like betrayal, but it’s real.

I’m not angry at my parents. I understand now that they carried their own heavy stories, their own pain, their own limits. They gave what they could.

But now it’s my turn.

I don’t want to burn out like that. I don’t want to live under that pressure. I don’t want to spend my life trying to be enough for a voice that was never really mine, or to raise my child with a weight like that on her shoulders...

I want something different.

I want to rise from this. To heal. To live without that constant weight. To love freely, to be present, to feel like I am enough without having to prove it... and I want my child to know  my love towards her is unconditional....

Sometimes I feel like I am on my own with these thoughts, so I created LALO maybe there are other people who can relate to similar struggles :)