What Mother’s Day Doesn’t Say: On Losing Her, On Never Becoming Her

Where do we place the grief that has no name?

Mother’s Day passes, and for many, it brings flowers, breakfasts in bed, tiny handprints in crayon frames.

But for some of us, it reopens the oldest wound.

My biological mother died when I was three—a victim of Camp Lejeune’s poisoned waters. My stepmother, the only mother I truly knew, died when I was twenty. She raised me. She was the love of my life. She is gone.

And I never became a mother.

This year, on Mother’s Day, I did what I know to do with grief: I painted.

I spent the day in my Santa Fe studio. Gentle strokes. A whisper of color against canvas. The soft resistance of paint beneath brush—the sacred physicality of creation. The act of softening sorrow into hue. Layering grief into gold.

Art does what language cannot. It allows the body to speak when the voice cannot bear it.

The painting featured here—part of my museum-ready installation, The Empty Womb—is not just art. It is testimony.

To the golden child who never was.
To the women who mother with their hands, not their wombs.
To those who lost their mothers too soon.
To the ones still waiting, aching, healing.

I offer this body of work to you. A sanctuary for the unspeakable.

You can view the full installation and read the origin story of The Empty Womb here:
👉 rofirestone.com/projects/the-empty-womb

To the motherless daughters. To the healing ones. To the quietly childless.
Let my paintings be a place you come home to.
Let the art hold what your body no longer can.
I've got you.

With fierce tenderness,
Robbi Firestone
Artist. Griever. Creator of the Unspeakable Beauty.

✨ Want to experience this work in person or bring it to your institution or collection?
👉 Inquire about studio visits, private viewings, or museum partnerships.
Or email me directly: robbifirestone@gmail.com