Mother Hungry

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There’s a kind of hunger that isn’t satisfied by food or drink. It’s a hunger for something deeper, something you should have received but never did. When you grow up without the love and care you needed most, it leaves a mark. You grow used to feeling scared, invisible, unheard. You grow up thinking that’s just how it is.

But somewhere down the road, you begin to realize you weren’t asking for too much, you were asking for what you deserved all along. And that realization, though painful, becomes the beginning of something else: the moment you learn to fill that hunger with your own love.

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The Poem Itself

Mother Hungry

I didn’t know it at first—
the hunger,
not the kind that growls for food,
but the kind that slithers,
beneath the skin,
taking root in my chest,
a murmuring that something is missing.

For years,
I thought I was too much,
too loud,
too much to hold,
but I wasn’t.
I was mother hungry,
starving for the kind of love
that surrounds you,
makes you feel safe,
wanted,
cherished.

When that love never came,
I learned to survive on crumbs—
a word,
a glance,
a fleeting touch.
Each scrap,
I held like a lifeline
that barely kept me breathing.

Now,
I’m learning to give it to myself,
to cradle the parts of me
that were never held,
to fill the empty places
with the tenderness
they’ve always needed.

And that’s my strength—
taking the hunger,
nourishing the parts of me
that were starved,
and turning it into healing.

— d.l.heather

This is one of the poems from my upcoming poetry book, Sea Salt and Silence, coming June 30. If it resonated with you, I hope you’ll stick around. There’s more where this came from.

Reflection/Analysis

I looked for that love in all the wrong places, thinking it could be found outside of me, in others who didn’t have what I needed to give myself. But there was a moment not so long ago, an almost unnoticeable moment, when I realized I needed to stop punishing myself.

The love I needed wasn’t going to come from anyone else. I had to learn how to mother myself. I had to learn how to be the warmth I never had, the comfort I needed, the voice that reassured me I mattered. It was hard at first, but over time, those empty spaces began to fill, not with the love I was missing, but with the love I was learning to give myself.

And now, the parts of me that once felt invisible and unlovable are the very parts I protect, the parts I hold most tenderly. And that, to me, is where true strength begins—turning the hunger into the healing that only you can give yourself.

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Write It Out

How has growing up without maternal love shaped your relationship with yourself?

In what ways have you learned to fill that hunger?

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Debra 💛