Mother’s Day is often experienced on a “knife edge,” balancing high-pressure societal expectations of perfection with deep personal feelings of grief, loss, or inadequacy.
It is a complex emotional day that can bring joy while simultaneously highlighting unmet expectations, strained relationships, or the pain of being motherless.
Mother’s Day will always be a reminder of what was and what will never be, and while there is the present—what is—the reality isn’t quite what Hallmark suggests.
We can’t change what we’ve lost, whether it be our mothers or our fantasies of who those mothers could have been, our children or the dreams of the children we hoped to have. We must mourn those relationships and try to find fulfillment another way.
Mother’s Day may sting and burn. It may be complete crap or great fun, involving multi-generations of women eating Sunday brunch and sipping mimosas.
The holiday feels coercive, as though it tells us what to feel and it leaves out those who don’t fit its template.
Some kids lost mothers early in life or through immigration or imprisonment; some were adopted and might have felt they had two mothers or none; other kids rattled around the foster care system without anything much resembling parents of any gender.
Some of us – I was one – had mothers whose turbulent emotions made them feel more like the battlefield than the sanctuary.
I want to send love to anyone struggling today.
You’re definitely not alone. May you all find comfort, love and joy… today and every day!
