I know I was loved by my mother but don't remember/know her and the pain of that will probably never go away despite being loved by other women.

I think you are grieving for her/the relationship with your rage and anger, trying to stay away from the "loss" (as in how you feel in the transference when your T is away; you can't be feeling that depth of loss for the actual T since she always comes back and isn't gone very "long," etc.).

What do you imagine mourning is like? I think you and I are doing a heck of a job mourning our mother's that were/were not. Your adoptive father wasn't a primary care-giver, a mother. My father, who was my primary care-giver when I was 2-5, I was horribly affraid in my 20's about his dying and I'd be swept along with him because I would not have been able to lose him. I had a heck of a time growing up when he went away because of the loss of my mother but meeting my husband, I think my husband took his "place" so his loss in 1992 and my stepmother's in 2001 were losses of my "youth"/childhood, major people who knew me as a young child, etc. but not devastating. I'm "fine" with both their deaths because I have my husband who is a major source of that love "energy" for me. I'm already anxious about what will happen with me if/when my husband dies.