It’s OK if you love/hate Mother’s Day
Mother's Day. A shockingly triggering holiday. Whether you want to become a mom and you cannot. You have a strained relationship with your own mother. You’ve lost your mother. You’ve lost a child.
If you are lucky enough to be a mother, you’re not out of the woods.
Mother’s Day is loaded because the role of mother is loaded. There are unrealistic expectations on you year-round. Expectations around what you can give, how much you can give and when you can give it. So on this day you may inevitably have…unrealistic expectations. You want to both be with your family and be adored, and to be a recluse and just sleep. You want to be surprised and also confident you’ll get what you want. You want the holiday to be about YOU, not about your own mother anymore. You want your partner to deeply understand and voice how your experience is different (read: HARDER) than theirs.
And so you wait for the day to come with BOTH anticipation and trepidation. And you’re grateful to be here but maybe you’re also disappointed. Celebrating motherhood, like being a mother itself, is an impossible task. The balance will never be there. The wholeness we chase might not come for a long time.
This isn’t a doomsday post, though. First, it’s for you to take comfort in the fact that all over the country this weekend, moms are crying in pantries, fighting with partners, and silently stewing alongside you. It means that your challenge at this moment is NOT yours alone. That YOU are not alone. That your family isn’t uniquely shit. It’s just…a hard thing to get right. As I’ve said time and again, do your best to voice your wants and needs for the day explicitly. Be prepared for confusing feelings. Try and pay attention to those feelings and acknowledge them (just like we try and do for our kids all the fucking time). Know that your family and friends really do love you and see everything you do, even if they don’t somehow nail it on the day. And lastly, just like I don’t believe in New Years Eve being the only day we make resolutions, celebrating your contribution to your family happens YEAR ROUND. Collect the small beautiful moments where you feel seen, adored, and loved deeply. Collect them like flowers and build a bouquet for yourself that will last way longer than that overpriced thing you wanted your husband to get you from the florist but that you now hate.