I was 20 months old when my mother Joyce died. I don’t have a single memory of her. Not her voice, not her hands, not the way she smelled. Everything I know about her comes from other people’s stories and a few photographs that look like they belong to someone else’s family.
I think about what she would have taught me if she had stayed. Not the big lessons. The small ones. The ones mothers pass down without realizing they’re teaching anything at all.
TL;DR: I lost my mother to suicide at 20 months old. I’ve spent decades thinking about the lessons she never got to teach me: how to be gentle with yourself, how to ask for help, and how to sit with sadness without trying to fix it. These are the things I’m learning on my own.
How to be gentle with yourself
I’m hard on myself. Anyone who knows me will tell you that. I push through fatigue, ignore discomfort, treat rest like weakness. I built a $15 million company on that instinct, so it’s hard to argue with the results.
But it comes at a cost. I’ve burned out twice. I’ve ignored my body until it forced me to stop. I’ve treated every setback like a personal failure instead of a data point.
I think mothers teach you how to be kind to yourself. Not through lectures, but through how they respond when you fall. When you scrape your knee and they don’t just clean it but also say it’s okay to cry. That permission gets internalized. You carry it with you.
I never got that. I’m learning it now, at 48, in therapy and through Anne, who has more patience with me than I have with myself.
How to ask for help
For most of my career, asking for help felt like admitting failure. I hired 50 people and still tried to make every decision myself. I ran a construction company and drove material deliveries because I didn’t trust anyone else to do it right.
That’s not strength. It’s control dressed up as competence.
I watch my kids ask for help without hesitation. Josie will call me and say, “Dad, I need you to explain this math problem.” No shame, no preamble. Just a direct request. Somewhere along the way, she learned that asking for help is normal.
I’m still learning that. Every time I delegate something or tell a colleague I don’t know the answer, it feels a little uncomfortable. But it’s getting easier.
How to sit with sadness
I’m good at many things. Sitting with uncomfortable emotions is not one of them. My default response to sadness is to work harder, move faster, or solve a problem. Anything to avoid the feeling.
I think about what it would have been like to have a mother who said, “You don’t have to fix this. You can just be sad for a while.” I never heard that growing up. My stepmom Paula did her best, and I love her for it, but there’s something about a biological mother’s permission that hits different.
The closest I’ve come is in grief counseling. A therapist told me that sadness isn’t a problem to solve. It’s information. It tells you that something mattered. When you let it be there, it moves through you. When you fight it, it stays.
I’m getting better at this. Not good at it. Better.
What I carry forward
I can’t go back and get the lessons I missed. But I can teach them to my kids. When Sydney is upset, I sit with her instead of trying to fix it. When Kyan asks for help, I drop what I’m doing. When Josie needs gentleness, I try to give what I never received.
That’s the best answer I have for a question that doesn’t really have one. You can’t replace what was taken. But you can build something from the empty space it left behind.
About Khary Penebaker
Khary Penebaker is a Regional General Manager at Great Day Improvements, overseeing operations across Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis. He previously built Roofed Right America from startup to $35M+ in revenue with 180 employees and founded Penebaker Enterprises, growing it from $1.5M to $15M. A gun violence prevention advocate and former Everytown for Gun Safety Fellow, Khary brings two decades of leadership experience in construction, operations, and civic engagement.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does losing a parent young affect adulthood?
You fill in the gaps with whoever and whatever is around. Some of those fill ins are good. Some are not. The work is figuring out which lessons you picked up that serve you and which ones you need to unlearn.
How do you honor a parent you never really knew?
You live in a way that would make them proud, even when you are guessing at what that means. For me, it means speaking about things that matter and being present for my own kids.
Can you grieve someone you do not remember?
Yes. You grieve the absence, not the memory. You grieve what should have been there. That grief is real even if you cannot name a single memory of the person.
Keep Reading
Last updated: March 25, 2026