A Gift for Mom! 🤍

I’ll Make the Memories With My Daughter I Never Got To Make With My Mother

3 Minute Read

By Shawna Kaszer

Mom and tween girl smile — Daniellart/Shutterstock.com

There are a lot of mother-daughter memories I never had the chance to make with my mom.

Memories that have come and gone without her, that I’ve spent many sleepless nights praying circles around, standing firm with God that my daughter will one day have.

I will be at her wedding. I will hold her babies. I will show up to clean her dishes and make her soup when she’s sick or when she needs nothing more than someone to call.

When sickness steals a mother far before her time, it does more than just steal the person you love.

It steals a lifetime of memories you and your person had yet to make. When I lost Mom, I lost an entire life we should have had together, grieving all of the supposed-tos that suddenly and permanently became never-wills.

RELATED: Only a Motherless Daughter Knows

Hugs we would never share. Belly-laughs that would undoubtedly bring us to tears. Silly texts and late-night calls and visits left to my imagination that would never really exist. When I lost Mom, I mourned much of my own life along with hers—both the life we shared and the life we never would.

I sat at the edge of my daughter’s bed not long ago, rubbing her aching legs.

It was dark, and my 4-year old’s face was smooshed into her pillow as she squirmed from growth pains until the touch of her mama’s hand finally helped her slip into sleep.

I stayed watching her for a while, transported in memory to my own childhood bedroom where my mother once sat at the edge of my bed, in the dark, rubbing my aching legs until I fell asleep.

RELATED: When Time Doesn’t Fix your Grief

I closed my eyes then, lost somewhere between being a daughter and being a mother, and thought to myself, this is the place where redemption lives.

It wasn’t until I had a daughter of my own that I discovered the many redemptive gifts motherhood had waiting for me.

Gifts I’m unwrapping every single day, with every late-night leg massage and every laugh shared between us.

RELATED: If I Could Talk to the Girl Who Just Lost Her Mom

A daughter to a motherless daughter is one of God’s most loving ways of redeeming the many somedays stolen with new somedays that can’t possibly replace, but can absolutely restore memories lost with new memories just waiting to be found.

For every laugh Mom and I would have shared, I share one extra with my own daughter, and I treasure the melody our laughs together make. It reminds me of a sweet song I used to know.

So God Made a Grandmother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Order Now!

Shawna Kaszer

Shawna Kaszer is a storyteller whose work spans film, theater, and most recently her book Mountains Into Roads: One Woman's Adventure On The Road Between Losing A Mother And Becoming A Mother. She is fiercely determined to see women and men find freedom, healing, and wholeness. Shawna and her husband run KZRHouse where she leads identity and story, working with passionate forerunners and innovators on mission to help change the world. She is co-founder of The Future Is Family (www.thefutureis.family) a social impact shop focused on the pivotal role of family in the transformation of culture. Shawna lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, Chad, their two young children (third on the way!), and their puppy P.T. Barnum. Her favorite days are simple and sweet, getting dirty in the garden with her family, or sticky on the front porch eating ice-cream. You can check out her recent film and more about her book at www.shawnakaszer.com.

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

In: Grief

Woman with mother smiling in older photo

Recently, whenever I look in the mirror, I see a strong resemblance to my mother. People always said I looked like her, but I never really saw it until now. I think it may be because you always think of your parents as being older than you are. At the age of 61, I am now only two years away from the age my mother was when she died. The only good thing about dying young is that everyone will remember you that way. I have only known my mom as the vibrant, personable, and active woman she was. Well,...

Keep Reading

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood

Editor’s note: This post discusses child loss Child loss changes Mother’s Day. My 19-month-old, Julia, died suddenly on Mother’s Day in 2024. Three months later, her autopsy revealed she had B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (B-ALL, also known as SUDNIC). Julia died a week after we did an embryo transfer at an IVF clinic in an attempt to have a second child. We found out three days after Julia’s death that the embryo did not make it either. Six months later, we did another embryo transfer that succeeded, and I now have an 8-month-old daughter, Lucy Mei (“Mei Mei” means “little...

Keep Reading

I Miss Having Parents

In: Grief

Grown daughter posing between smiling parents

I have been living with the ache of loss for so long that I truly don’t remember what it feels like not to carry it. Sometimes it rests quietly beneath my ribs, dormant and almost polite. Other times it rises without warning—on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of a coffee line—and cuts straight through me. Today, it was a song. I was waiting for my coffee when “Pictures of You” by The Cure drifted through the café speakers. I hadn’t heard it in 20 years. In my twenties, it meant heartbreak—young love unraveling, relationships ending before they were...

Keep Reading

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

In: Grief

Nobody tells you that when you lose a sibling, your entire childhood flashes before your eyes. There’s no better witness to what you experienced growing up than that one person who was standing nearby for all of it. And when they’re gone, a part of that childhood and a part of that story goes with them, because it was only ever known between the two of you. There’s no last chance to say, “Remember when?” or to laugh about the things that made you laugh to tears together, a million times at the kitchen table. There’s no last conversation about...

Keep Reading

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

In: Grief

I survived losing my father after his long, grueling battle with cancer. It was one of the most difficult seasons of my life. I had a front row seat to watch cancer pick him apart piece by piece. When you lose a parent, you lose a part of yourself. They say time heals all wounds, but you never stop missing the good ones, and there are days when it feels like it just happened. By the grace of God, I survived, but I will always miss my father. Then, almost a decade later, I lost the career that helped me...

Keep Reading

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

In: Grief

During the weeks we cared for my grandmother in hospice, survival mode felt necessary. There were medications to track. Visitors to update. Logistics to manage. I remember sitting on the couch that served as my makeshift bed and listening to the rhythmic hissing and puffing of the oxygen machine one night. While my mom showered off the day, I texted my sister updates and sent my husband a quick message of love. I could still smell the lavender candle we had lit earlier in the day to mask medical scents. The house was quiet, but my mind wasn’t. I was...

Keep Reading

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

In: Grief

Woman's hands holding beautifully wrapped small gift

It has been two months and nine days since my mom passed away. The first several weeks were spent on the details and logistics of planning her service. She passed in December, so once her beautiful service had passed, I busied myself with the preparations for Christmas. By mid-February, I finally began to process some feelings of grief on a deeper level. The quiet of this less-busy season is allowing the grief to soak in a bit more. Not the big things; not the obvious, grief-heavy reminders that stop me in my tracks. Instead, I’ve been noticing the small things....

Keep Reading

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

In: Grief

It’s been 10 years since I last heard my mother’s voice. Ten years since I could pick up the phone and ask a question I already knew the answer to, just to hear her say it anyway. Ten years since someone loved me in that very specific, unconditional, occasionally annoying way that only a mother can. My mom died in 2015. And while “passed away” sounds softer, more polite, the truth is that she left. Suddenly. Permanently. With no forwarding address. She was gone. What I’ve learned in the decade since is not what I expected. I thought the biggest lesson...

Keep Reading

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

In: Grief, Marriage

The year 2025 began as a quiet storm. I was slipping into the fog of depression while navigating the early chaos of perimenopause, and some days simply getting out of bed felt impossible. My thoughts felt dark and heavy, my body unfamiliar, my energy nonexistent, and my moods uncontrollable. And yet, in the haze, there was one constant: my husband. He noticed the subtle shifts I barely acknowledged. The sighs, the quiet retreats into myself, the moments I almost broke. Instead of judgment or frustration, he offered presence. He held space for my struggle without trying to “fix” it, and...

Keep Reading

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

In: Grief

Becoming a mother has a way of bringing old wounds back to the surface, even ones you believed had healed. I never imagined grief would surface so strongly in my motherhood journey. I thought it was something you carried silently, something that faded with time. But becoming a mother felt like my loss rising to its feet and saying, I’m still here There are moments when I reach for my phone to call my mom, only to be met with the reminder that I can’t. I want to ask her if what I’m feeling is normal, if the exhaustion softens,...

Keep Reading

What a Foster Family Needs You To Know

Living

What a Foster Family Needs You To Know

Dear Daughter, You'll Never Forget Your First Love

Teen

I’ll Make the Memories With My Daughter I Never Got To Make With My Mother

There are a lot of mother-daughter memories I never had the chance to make with my mom.

RELATED: Only a Motherless Daughter Knows

I sat at the edge of my daughter’s bed not long ago, rubbing her aching legs.

RELATED: When Time Doesn’t Fix your Grief

It wasn’t until I had a daughter of my own that I discovered the many redemptive gifts motherhood had waiting for me.

RELATED: If I Could Talk to the Girl Who Just Lost Her Mom

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Shawna Kaszer

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

I Miss Having Parents

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

Get It Now

So God Made a Mother

I’ll Make the Memories With My Daughter I Never Got To Make With My Mother

There are a lot of mother-daughter memories I never had the chance to make with my mom.

I sat at the edge of my daughter’s bed not long ago, rubbing her aching legs.

It wasn’t until I had a daughter of my own that I discovered the many redemptive gifts motherhood had waiting for me.

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

I Miss Having Parents

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

Previous Post

Next Post

You May Also Like