When A Mother Leaves and Doesn't Come Back

Part 3: What K-Drama gets wrong ( and right) about maternal abandonment and why it matters

Some mothers leave. Mine did.

Across cultures, we inherit myths about mothers who leave, stories that shape what we expect, excuse, or endure in the name of love.

This essay explores the deep cultural narratives around maternal abandonment and what happens when a mother leaves, not out of sacrifice, but out of self-preservation. It reflects on healing from maternal abandonment, the myths we inherit, and the tender work of honoring the truth without rewriting it.

Here are the links to Part One and Part Two if you missed them. When it comes to the topic of mothers, one essay will not suffice. Neither will four, for that matter, but you do what you can.

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Just ask my hubby, Ron. He knows that one of my favorite rhythms of the day is crawling into my cozy bed at night, curling up with the pups, and turning on the latest episode of whatever K-drama I am watching.

There is something about these Korean series that soothes me. The gentle pacing, the depth of character, the way emotion is given room to breathe. They capture the beauty and complexity of being human in a way that feels both tender and true. I love how much weight they give to small moments: a shared meal, a long walk, the slow weaving of relationships. I watch and remember that in a suffering world, tenderness still matters. Connection still matters. What can happen when people stay for the long haul matters.

But as much as these stories comfort me, they also stir something deeper.

Over time, I have begun to notice a theme around an old ache of my own: the mother who disappears.

In K-Drama, mothers leave. It generally unfolds like this: after introducing the main character’s storyline, we are eventually shown a series of flashbacks. The backstory often begins with hardship: a young woman gives birth under difficult circumstances, such as poverty, shame, or she discovers a chronic illness. Unable to see a way forward, she makes the brutal choice to leave her child behind, convinced that her absence and sacrifice is the only form of love she can offer. The child grows up unaware of her mother’s struggle, bearing the weight of her abandonment. Years later, just as the now adult child’s life begins to settle, the mother finally returns, tearful, trembling, full of longing.

"I did it for you," she says.

The next montage reveals the mother's brave, sacrificial choice on behalf of her child. She never stopped loving her child. She loved from afar. Even in her absence, she stayed tethered to her child in spirit. Though the adult child is devastated by learning the backstory, they are also moved. They see the sacrifice. They feel the ache of what was lost, but slowly lean into love.

Cue the music. Cue the redemption.

It is a familiar trope, a story told with emotional precision and cultural reverence. The mother’s leaving is framed as tragic but noble, her love tucked away like a secret gift. Though it is painful, there is a purpose behind it. It makes understanding and forgiveness, if not easy, at least more attainable.

Not every K- Drama mother-leaving storyline follows this exact pattern, but many do. It is comforting in a way. It makes the ache of the grown child and the sacrifice of the mother feel meaningful. It tells us the wound was for our good. That she charted a difficult path to save us. It somehow makes it all okay. See how much she loved you?

But unlike these stories, some mothers who leave do not vanish to protect the child from domestic violence, poverty, or a disease that would make the mother somehow “a burden.” They leave because they are running from their own pain, and sometimes, they run so long and so far that they never come back.

And when that is your story, these cultural myths can cut deep.

What if the truth is simpler, and harder: you were not chosen.

What if she walked away and never looked back? What if there was no secret sacrifice, no tender explanation, no suffering offered on your behalf?

Just silence and unanswered questions.

Facing that alternative story, that a mother might leave because she wanted a different life without her children, is not a story we see very often. Likely because it is not a story we want to see.

What if your mother did not leave to save you? What if she left to save herself?

This brings complicated follow-up questions.

• What if she was so desperate that leaving was the only option she could see to save her own life?

• Do your children’s needs always trump your own?

• What if her guilt and shame were so heavy and inescapable that all she could think to do was run? And after running for so long, she couldn’t face the consequences of her actions, even if she wanted to come back?

There are so many scenarios we could play out here, and in multiple combinations.

A portion of my answer came at 28, when I found her and she sent me away again, saying only, "Go home. I have my life, you have yours."

( I made a short film about this encounter, and you can watch it free here, if you’d like. )

As an adult, I can understand that sometimes leaving can feel like your only option. Maybe, in her pain, she left because she could see no other way to survive. I can have compassion for the pain that shaped her choices without excusing the harm those choices caused. I do have compassion for her but let’s not pretend it was for my good.

Granted, some mothers leave for just a time — circumstances can break any of us — but then they later return to heal the breach they caused. They want restoration, they want to make amends. They miss their children. That takes courage and humility and I know of families who have been restored and who have repaired the break and are stronger at the broken places. It’s beautiful and miraculous to witness.

Mine chose to stay gone. She chose a new life that no longer included the family she had left behind. She wanted her new life more than she wanted her old family.

That is a more challenging story to tell. And I would love to see someone tackle it. I suppose it does not make for good television. There is no piano swelling beneath the silence. No soft-lit, tender reconciliation scene. Just a child, then an adult, growing up with a hollow space where a mother might have been, and all the baggage that comes with it. Never feeling enough to be chosen. By your own mother.

Even when we grow, reason, heal and remind ourselves it was not personal, it can still feel personal. The body carries it all.

And somewhere deep inside, the wound still whispers: you were not enough. You were not worth staying for. That is the lie so many of us carry quietly, the one that sinks its teeth in deeper when no one dares to name it. Which is precisely why we must.

But here is the truth I have found: her inability to stay was never proof of our unworthiness. It was a reflection of her own wounds. Her own limitations. Her own unfinished work. Often, her own lack of resources or support.

We were always worthy. We were always enough. We just did not get the mother who could show us that.

And still, we go on.

We learn to mother ourselves. We open to love from other places, from grandmothers, from teachers, from girlfriends, from partners, from our children, from a Higher Power. We soften. We strengthen. We tell the truth, even when it does not tie up neatly with background music and warm lighting.

Maybe that is what healing really looks like. Not rewriting the story to make her a hidden hero. Nor casting her as a complete villain. Not forcing a happy ending. Not making excuses for the pain she caused.

Healing looks like telling the truth, grieving what was real, and learning to live with the ache without letting it define you.

These days, Mother’s Day does not hurt the way it used to. My life is full. I have a husband who loves me, daughters who know I will not leave, a circle of friendship around me. I am surrounded by love, by steadiness, by the kind of presence I once longed for.

I am not living in the wound anymore.

And still, there is something there. A soft ache that rises, not in sorrow, but sometimes in watching a K-drama, seeing reconciliation, amends, and a new relationship bloom between an estranged mother and daughter. Still, after all this time, I cannot help but want it.

Sometimes I wonder why it still lingers, in the midst of so much love. But I know now:

Love does not cancel longing. And longing does not undo the love that is here. I can hold both.

And maybe that quiet ache is not a sign that I am broken or stuck. Maybe it is the sacred thread of my story asking not to be forgotten. Not because I have not healed. But because it still matters. Because it shaped me. Because it taught me how to stay. How to love. How to mother. Healing asks us not to rewrite our stories to make them easier to bear, but to honor them as they are. To listen to the truth of our lives, even when it rises in an ache we cannot explain, or when we cannot find it reflected in the stories the world tells. There is a sacredness in telling the truth about the love we needed and did not receive. We do not have to silence it. We can honor it. Because even now, it still speaks the truth.

I am a true believer in the tenderness at the heart of Korean dramas and their faith in love’s power to heal. But not every story fits neatly into that formula.

Real healing, I am learning, is not about fixing the story or making it easier to tell. It is allowing the whole story to be seen, held, and loved. The beauty, the pain, the longing, and the ache, all accepted without shame. It is choosing to accept the truth of what happened, even when we longed for a different ending, and to hold it all with love.

xo Mary

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Coming Next Week: The Mothering God ( May 25)

In Part 4, I will share how I began to experience a love deeper than the one I lost, a love that did not leave, did not abandon, and did not disappear. It is a reflection on grief, belonging, and discovering the sacred presence that has been with me all along. In finding the Divine Feminine and Mothering God, the story that once broke me began to come full circle. I hope you will join me for the final essay of the series.