Mother to Mother

By Lee Tempest, January 2026 

This poem is written from lived experience and reflects the voices of mothers supporting children with trauma and neurodevelopmental differences.  

Mother to Mother

To me, you are not invisible. 

I know the wounds you carry  
left by the hands of the child you love. 
I carry them too. 

They do not close. 
They weep and fester beneath the skin, 
because a loved and wanted child 
is not meant to harm their mother. 

And still  
we know our children are hurting too. 

We know their nervous systems learned danger early, 
that trauma carved pathways through their bodies, 
that some brains were wired differently from the start, 
asking more of them than the world will ever admit. 

We know they live in survival, 
that fear speaks before language, 
that rage can be a shield, 
and control a desperate attempt to feel safe. 

Knowing this does not lessen the blows. 
It does not soften the words. 
It does not stop the violence. 

I see the shame clinging to you, 
radiating like a low, dim light  
a grief so heavy it circles your body 
as you try, again and again, 
to push it away. 

I feel the ache of the mother you longed to be, 
the one you were never allowed to become. 
Fear governs your days. 
What if governs your nights. 

I know the pain of loving without limit 
and being met with rejection. 

Your failure is my failure. 
Our other children grow up listening to violence breathe through the walls, 
and we carry the unbearable truth 
that love alone could not stop it. 

I hear your crying  
the quiet kind. 
Tears that fall in the car on the way to school, 
or in the locked bathroom at night, 
where even grief must whisper. 

I see the thinning circle of family, friends and whānau, 
those who turn away, 
who blame you, 
who soften the violence until it almost disappears 
except it never does. 

I know how the worst of it waits for you. 
How it is hidden. 
Saved. 
Delivered when no one else is watching. 

I know the words flung at you carry poison, 
and you feel it spread through your body long after the sound fades. 

I understand the anger  
the quiet, burning rage  
toward professionals who offer programmes instead of protection, 
who speak of boundaries and consequences 
to a mother already living in fear. 

I see your exhaustion. 
How each morning costs you something. 
How you survive in a home that is not safe, 
while the world beyond your front door insists 
you are unseen. 

But I see you. 

And I see the many mothers like us. 

We hold compassion in one hand 
and terror in the other. 
We love our children fiercely 
while absorbing what should never be ours to carry. 

We find each other in the quiet. 
In the knowing. 
In the wounds that speak the same language. 

We are not invisible to each other. 

To those who stand at the edges of our lives 
with clipboards, frameworks, and programmes  
see us. 

Do not ask us to carry more. 
Do not mistake survival for resistance, 
or exhaustion for unwillingness. 

Meet us with safety before strategy, 
with protection before parenting advice. 
Listen long enough to understand 
that love has never been the thing we lacked. 

We will keep holding our children 
with as much tenderness as we can find. 
But we ask no, we need  
to be held too. 

Because compassion without safety 
is not kindness. 
And love, on its own, 
cannot absorb endless harm.