Parenting Without Parents

There are moments in motherhood that are full of light—when my girls are giggling together, reaching for me with sleepy eyes, or telling me about their day with that sparkle only little kids have. And then, there are moments when the absence of my parents feels like a weight I can’t quite put down.

I’m parenting without my parents.

My dad passed away in 2007. My mom in 2023.

I had a glimpse of what my dad was like as a grandfather—21 years ago, when my niece was born. She was the light of his life, and I know, deep down, he would have felt the same way about my girls. He never got the chance to meet them. And sometimes, it's hard not to feel a pang of jealousy—knowing the kind of love he gave, and knowing my daughters won’t experience that from him.

My mom did get to meet both girls. She loved her grandkids with a fierce, joyful kind of love—arguably more than she loved me and my sister, if we're being honest, haha. Josephine has already outgrown the things my mom so carefully picked out for her, and Georgie was just three months old when she passed—she never really got the chance to know her at all.

That’s the part that stings the most—not just the grief of losing them, but the ache of what doesn’t continue. The relationship that’s frozen in time. My girls won’t remember my mom’s laugh, or how cute it was when she and Josephine shared mini ice cream cones (despite me not wanting her to have any more sweets after the M&Ms she’d already been given—insert eye roll). They won’t get to climb into her lap or run into my dad’s arms as they play outside.

I tell my girls stories. I show them photos. I hold space for them to know the grandparents they never got to grow up with—but it will never replicate the feeling of having them here. It will never come close. And that, that is hard to sit with.

Parenting without your parents is a specific kind of heartbreak. It’s loving your children so much it overwhelms you—while simultaneously mourning the people who made you, who you wish were here to see it. It’s watching your kids grow and hit milestones and thinking, they should be here for this. It’s wishing you had someone to ask, “Did I do this too?” Or to lean on when the days feel impossibly long.

This isn’t the story I imagined. But it’s ours. And I will continue on each day, carrying their love, and sprinkling their memory into my girls’ lives—because even in their absence, they are still here.