Article image

Comforting Quotes About Dealing With the Loss of a Mother

Losing a mother — or any type of maternal figure — evokes lots of complicated feelings for all of us, no matter how old we are when we experience it. If we’re young, we may feel regret and frustration that she won’t get to see the person we become. And at any age, we may feel at a loss as to how to carry on as we’re forced to adjust to life without her.

This loss, like any type of grief, can also make us feel very isolated. As actor Andrew Garfield said after his mother’s passing, “It’s so strange because it feels very unique when it is happening. It feels like, ‘Oh my God, I’m the only person that’s ever lost their mother,’ because it does feel so lonely and precise.”

Michelle Zauner echoed a similar sentiment in Crying in H Mart, her acclaimed 2021 memoir about coping with her mother’s death, when she wrote, “It felt like the world had divided into two different types of people, those who had felt pain and those who had yet to.”

Obviously and unfortunately, losing a mother is something many of us will go through in our lifetimes. Regardless, it just feels different when it happens to us. “No one has lost my mother. No one besides me knows the exact size and shape of the hole she leaves behind in the world.”

No matter where you’re at in the grieving process, we hope these quotes will help soothe your heart and remind you of the power of a mother’s love to transcend even death.

The mother memories that are closest to my heart are the small, gentle ones that I have carried over from the days of my childhood. They are not profound, but they have stayed with me through life. And when I am very old, they will still be near.
Margaret Sanger

Share Quote

How cyclical and bittersweet for a child to retrace the image of their mother. For a subject to turn back to document their archivist.
Michelle Zauner

Share Quote

Grief and love are conjoined, you don’t get one without the other. All I can do is love her and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.
Jandy Nelson

Share Quote

I cannot forget my mother. She is my bridge. When I needed to get across, she steadied herself long enough for me to run across safely.
Renita Weems

Share Quote

I chose not to lose my mom, and instead to gain an angel. In my mind, my heart, and my life, she is still completely present to this day — and as wise, compassionate, and stubborn as ever.
Kevin Hart

Share Quote

“There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them,” my mother explained shortly before she left me. “If you can remember me, I will be with you always.”
Isabel Allende

Share Quote

The world didn’t make sense, and it still doesn’t, because I miss her greatly, and I hope it never makes sense because I always want to miss her.
Andrew Garfield

Share Quote

It was only after her death that I realized who she was: the apparently magical force at the center of our family who'd kept us all invisibly spinning in the powerful orbit around her.
Cheryl Strayed

Share Quote

I realized a couple of days after she passed that no one would ever love me like that again. I wouldn’t put that kind of sparkle in anybody’s eye, you know? … But then I thought, this would really piss her off for sure, if I said that. She’d be like, “Really? Really? How many times have you been married? You don’t think you’ve put a sparkle in people’s eye? Get out of here.”
Whoopi Goldberg

Share Quote

I couldn’t help but wonder if my first breath was as soul-stirring to my mother as her last breath was to me.
Lisa Goich

Share Quote

Never. We never lose our loved ones. They accompany us; they don’t disappear from our lives. We are merely in different rooms.
Paulo Coelho

Share Quote

My mother is a never-ending song in my heart of comfort, happiness, and being. I may sometimes forget the words but I always remember the tune.
Graycie Harmon

Share Quote

I know in my head that she has gone, but I still keep looking. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It’s like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it’s there and you keep falling in. After a while, it’s still there, but you learn to walk round it.
Rachel Joyce

Share Quote

Featured image credit: Turac Novruzova/ Stock

Author image
About the Author
Brooke Robinson
Inspiring Quotes editor, bibliophile, cinephile, and curry enthusiast based in Cleveland, Ohio.
Play more header background
Play more icon
Daily Question
What songwriter said this? "You got a chance to go up and say something? Don’t be shy."

More Inspiration

happiness theme icon

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

separator icon
Edward Hopper
motivation theme icon

What counts is not the things that happen, but what we do with them.

separator icon
Annie Ernaux
hope theme icon

Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature.

separator icon
Salvador Dalí
love theme icon

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

separator icon
Stephen Covey
wisdom theme icon

The path from dreams to success does exist.

separator icon
Kalpana Chawla
happiness theme icon

To have courage for whatever comes in life — everything lies in that.

separator icon
Teresa of Ávila
motivation theme icon

The first time you do something only happens once.

separator icon
Chris Burden
hope theme icon

Let frustration fuel inspiration.

separator icon
Sonia Boyce
love theme icon

All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

separator icon
Leo Tolstoy
wisdom theme icon

Healing begins where the wound was made.

separator icon
Alice Walker
happiness theme icon

Let everything you do be done in love.

separator icon
1 Corinthians 16:14