Y’all I’m having feelings about Maura Isles today and how much both of her moms hurt her. It never fully hit me until my current selective rewatch that Maura has no idea who she is.
Her sense of identity is so easily shaken at any challenge. She’s inarguably the most good-hearted person in the R&I universe yet she’s seriously afraid that she’s like Doyle by nature and Hoyt by nurture. Later on, she believes that she might be guilty of murder because she doesn’t remember not doing it - she doesn’t have enough faith in her own character to say “hm, killing a guy seems pretty unlike me?”
Every mention of Maura’s childhood is about feeling lost, lonely, neglected, and she’s so used to having to solve all her problems alone that even after several years of Jane’s friendship, she still sometimes forgets that she can ask for help. When either of her mothers are present, they aren’t a source of comfort to Maura, instead her primary reaction is anxiety about not measuring up and failing to impress them. During the brain surgery arc, she’s terrified of not being able to carry out her M.E. duties, but even moreso that if her intelligence is impaired she’ll no longer be who she is. Her self worth and sense of identity are totally rooted in her performance.
Whenever she gets lost, Jane is there to take her hands and remind her what kind of a person she is, and she just totally soaks in whatever Jane says with this look on her face like she really doesn’t already know, and that’s because until Jane, nobody ever loved Maura just for being Maura. :(
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