The Weight of What Wasn’t: Holding Space for Both Anger and Compassion

There is a part of me that still wants her to see it, the full picture, the weight of what her unhealed trauma did to me, and how that weight shaped my journey on this earth. I don’t need an apology anymore. I don’t think it would change anything. But I want her to see it, not for me, but for her own growth. I want her to look at her choices, her unspoken wounds, and the way those ripples landed in my life.

I want her to acknowledge what she handed down, not out of shame or guilt, but so she can free herself from it, too. And yet, I know that waiting for this acknowledgment feels like trying to hold onto sand; it keeps slipping through my hands, no matter how tightly I grasp.

The anger I carry isn’t just anger. It’s the voice of the little girl inside me, the one who needed safety, love, and protection but got something else instead. It’s the voice that says, “See me. Hear me. Know what you did to me.” And this anger has been with me for so long that I’ve started to recognize how it spills into other places, into my relationships with others who resist change, into my frustration with their suffering, and into my struggle to hold space for them. I see now that I’ve been treating them as surrogates for my mother, holding them to a standard I couldn’t hold her to, getting angry at them in the ways I was never allowed to get angry at her.

This anger is valid. It deserves to exist. I’ve spent too much time invalidating it, telling myself to rise above it, to heal faster, to forgive without fully acknowledging the depth of my hurt. But this anger is also heavy. Carrying it day after day feels like carrying a fire in my chest that won’t go out. And as much as I want to keep holding onto it, I feel it asking for something more, a way to transmute, to shift, to soften into something else.

When I sit with this anger long enough, I find the grief waiting beneath it. It’s the grief of what wasn’t, the relationship I never had with my mother, the validation that never came, the love I longed for but couldn’t find in her. It’s the sadness of realizing that I might never get what I’ve been waiting for all these years.

Grieving this is hard. It feels like letting go of a rope I’ve been clinging to, a rope I thought would pull me toward some kind of resolution, some closure. But maybe healing isn’t about getting closure from someone else. Maybe healing is about grieving the things we hoped for but didn’t receive, and finding a way to honor ourselves in that process.

This grief feels heavy, too, but it’s different from the anger. The anger burns and lashes out; the grief sits quietly, waiting to be noticed. It asks me to sit with it, to feel the weight of what was lost, and to let that be okay. It asks me to let the tears come, not as a sign of defeat but as a release, a way to let the sorrow move through me instead of staying stuck inside.

As I grieve, I also feel the pull of compassion, not just for my mother but for myself. I can hold compassion for her and the unhealed parts of her that shaped my childhood. But I also need to hold compassion for the little girl I was, the one who had to grow up faster than she should have, who learned to survive in ways that made her feel invisible, and who is just now learning that her anger and sadness are worthy of being felt.

Compassion doesn’t mean excusing what happened. It doesn’t mean pretending it didn’t hurt or bypassing the anger to reach some enlightened state. Compassion means saying, “Yes, this hurt. Yes, this was unfair. And yes, I can still love myself enough to release the need for others to change.”

I can hold both, the anger that needed space and the compassion that brings release. Both can exist within me. I don’t have to choose one over the other. I can at last allow myself to feel the full spectrum of my emotions, knowing that they are all part of my healing.

This is the hardest part, letting go of the hope that she will ever see what I’ve been trying to show her, without letting go of myself in the process. I’ve realized that my healing isn’t dependent on her growth. I can grieve the relationship I wanted and still honor the one I have with myself. I don’t need her acknowledgment to validate my experience. I can validate it myself.

It’s not about giving up on her or shutting down my emotions. It’s about releasing the hold that waiting for her validation has had on my heart. It’s about saying, “I see you, I hear you, and I know what you’ve been through,” to myself.

This process isn’t easy, and it won’t happen overnight. But I believe that grief has the power to transform. When I allow myself to feel it fully, it begins to shift, like a heavy mist that lifts as the sun rises. The sadness doesn’t disappear, but it softens. And in that softening, I find space, space to breathe, to rest, to heal, and to create something new.

I don’t need to carry this weight forever. I can honor the lessons it has taught me and then lay it down with love. I can let the anger and grief flow through me, knowing that they are not my enemies; they are part of the alchemical process that turns pain into wisdom, sorrow into strength.

And as I walk this path of healing, I find that I am not just healing myself. I am healing generations of wounds, breaking cycles that were never mine to carry. I am reclaiming the light that was always inside me, hidden beneath the layers of anger, grief, and unmet expectations.

I am learning to offer myself the compassion I once longed to receive. And in doing so, I am discovering that I don’t need anyone else to see my worth. I see it. I feel it. And that is enough.

Some days, the anger might return, and the grief will feel overwhelming. But I am learning to trust the process, to trust that each flow of my emotions, no matter how small, brings me closer to the person I am becoming.

And that person, she is strong, she is whole, and she knows that her worth was never dependent on someone else’s acknowledgment. She carries both anger and compassion, both sorrow and love. And she knows that it is in holding these contradictions that true healing is found.

I may never get the closure I once longed for from my mother. But I can give myself the gift of release. I can allow the grief to flow through me, transmuting it into wisdom and strength. And in that process, I can finally step into the fullness of who I am, untethered, unburdened, and free.

This is the path I walk now, a path of self-compassion, release, and transformation. I don’t know exactly where it will lead, but I know this: every step forward is a step toward freedom, peace, and inner wisdom. And that is a path worth walking.

☥