Mother’s Day can be a complex and emotive subject for many of us due to our individual circumstances. Not everyone has a fairytale upbringing and a loving relationship with their mothers for many different reasons. Mother’s Day may provoke uncomfortable, painful or sad recollections instead of warm and happy thoughts and memories.
Our view and experience of Mother’s Day may vary throughout our lives depending on our age, life path and whether we are or have been mothers ourselves.
This affects how we feel on the day. The day itself is not only about our relationship with our own mother, who may or may not still be alive. It is also about the relationship we have with our children. In addition, we need to be mindful of the fact that just because a woman is not seen to have a child to care for, she may still be a mother. For example, she may have had an ectopic pregnancy, a miscarriage, a stillbirth or lost a child at any age. There may also be an estrangement in the relationship between mother and child that has now become too difficult to rectify for whatever reason.
This could likely bring many different emotions to the surface, ranging from ambivalence all the way through disappointment to hatred. It is important, as we approach Mother’s Day, to use it as a time not only for reflection but also an opportunity to be sensitive towards others who may not think of the day as a time for family celebration.
My own Mother’s Day story
Shortly after my birth in 1960, I was given up for adoption to a couple who were unable to conceive naturally. My parents were good, loving people who would do everything they could for me and my two younger adopted brothers.
If I reflect back to childhood memories of Mother’s Day, they were always filled with love. But as I grew older, they were equally tinged with sadness. I remember thinking what it would have been like to have had a relationship with my biological mother. My father sadly died suddenly when I was 18, which was a huge shock for the whole family.
I married and gave birth to the first of my two children at the age of 25. For the next ten years, I was able to celebrate Mother’s Day not only in relation to my own mother but as a mother myself. (Years later, I discovered that my biological mother had sadly died during the time of my first pregnancy.)
The following year could not have been more different.
I was a few weeks off my 36th birthday when my mother died suddenly from heart valve failure in early February. She had shown no symptoms of illness prior to this time. The shock was intense. I have little or no memory of how it was at the time. I made the arrangements, we got through the funeral and then my birthday the following week.
Mother’s Day, a couple of weeks later, was the furthest thing from my mind.
Although I knew that when the time came, I would hold things together for the sake of my children, then age 10 and 7. It was about a week before Mother’s Day when my husband at the time told me to go out and buy a card for his mother. He was too busy to buy it himself. His insensitivity provoked such enormous rage in me. All the emotions of the past month or so erupted to the surface, and he never asked again.
Life goes on, and I have since received many Mother’s Day cards, not only from my two children but also from my two amazing grandchildren.
Writing this has been quite thought-provoking for me. I hope it illustrates the rollercoaster of emotions we can all experience in relation to Mother’s Day.
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