Ah, Mother’s Day. Hands down my least favorite holiday of the year.
Mother’s Day has been an emotional challenge for me for years. Twelve years to be exact; every year since my first daughter was born still. I’ve handled it, and my grief around it, in various ways over the years. For a long time, I pretended it was no big deal. I celebrated my mother and hid the aching grief I felt around being without my child on this day. Other years I have talked about the pain of feeling invisible and forgotten as a mother on this day. Some years I tried to pretend it just didn’t exist and hid away from the world. Always it is a holiday marked with conflicting feelings of grief, anger, love, and sorrow.
Even after so many years, and all the work I do with others around grief, I still struggle with this holiday. I am still trying to figure out how to acknowledge and recognize myself on this day in a way that feels nurturing and fulfilling. Advocating for the awareness and recognition of mothers like myself without living children in recent years has helped ease some of the sense of anger and invisibility.
Not everyone understands the pain of this day, of Mother’s Day without my children. I have dealt with criticism, judgment, and anger toward me for how I feel about this holiday and for speaking out about it. Perhaps one can’t understand until one has had to live it without their children. On the flip side, I may never understand the joy that some mothers with physically here children may feel on this day.
Is there a “right” way to handle this holiday, for any of us? I don’t know.
The best I can do is choose to love and to live on this day. To love my mother and celebrate how she has loved and cared for me. To honor all the amazing mothers to living children that I know. To love, honor, and acknowledge all the mothers that I know without their children here with them.
I will also allow my sorrow. I will acknowledge the ache and longing for my children. I will feel whatever I feel and let that be ok. I will go to my spiritual center and acknowledge the pain when the mothers are recognized. I will lead a support group for other mothers like me and do my best to love on them. I will participate in the launch of this amazing new community. I will likely cry, laugh, curse, and simply breathe. I’ll be happy that my mother is my mother and that she’s still here.
I will remember my girls and be grateful that they chose me as their mother. I will celebrate them, because even with the pain and loss and grief I live with every day now, I am forever grateful to be their mother.
Mother’s Day is messy. Life is messy. Grief is messy. Motherhood is messy. Love is messy.
Today, I’ll embrace the beauty and the mess that is this day. And I’ll embrace the beauty and the mess of this life without my daughters, because I am their mother every day.
Emily works hard to increase education and improve care for bereaved mothers with medical professionals and other counselors. She also works with clients individually to provide support for grieving mothers and fathers. She writes and educates through her website, Emily Long: Archaeologist of the Living.
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- Stolen Memories - March 8, 2017
- Receiving Support - October 14, 2016