The Myriad of Emotions Associated with Mother's Day!

Each year, I reflect with gratitude on Mother's Day 2012, when I had recently left my corporate health care job in order to focus on my own women's wellness business, full time. It was on that day, while celebrating my own mother with my nieces, that immense nausea and fatigue led me to the drug store, where I purchased a digital pregnancy test, and moments later, learned that I was indeed getting ready to be a mother myself. I experienced a tremendous range of emotions right then. Today, as I celebrate my fourth Mother's Day (tee-hee), I am still grateful. I am blessed to be able to spend another Mother's Day with my own mother and to be around aunts and cousins who are also mothers.

At the same time, I am filled with a deep sadness for those longing for and missing their mothers because of loss, including my parents, my husband, my siblings, several of my closest cousins, and too many friends. I send sweet thoughts to those whose mothers are ailing with physical or mental disease, as well as to those who cannot travel to see their mothers because of distance, expense, inflexibility, brokenness, or conflict. 

As a birthworker, I spend Mother's Day sending love and light to those whom have lost children. I send miracles and blessings to the mothers of unborn children, still born children, and those struggling with infertility. I am thinking of those mothers who have had to bury an infant, child, adolescent, or an adult child. I am sending patience and forgiveness to mothers whom have lost their children to incarceration, addiction, or other destructive decisions. My heart goes out to the mothers whom have had forced or elective abortions. May the guilt, fear, pain, shame, grief, or isolation of these losses be transformed into peace, healing, power, inspiration, and possibility. 

                                                         An Open Letter To Mothers

I have so much compassion for the moms who have to work too many hours and too many jobs to see their children, just so that their basic needs are met. I feel for moms who have to drop their infants off with strangers at a daycare at 6 weeks because they can't afford to be off work another day. I feel for single mothers, mothers without support, those with strained interpersonal relationships, mental illnesses, or physical limitations- moms who just need a 
few more resources, and a lot more hugs. 

I stand in awe of the mothers who are mothering other mothers' children. To the foster and adoptive mothers, grandmothers, aunties, big sisters, family friends, teachers, mentors, and next door neighbors who have stepped in to mother, she it was impossible, unreasonable, or unsafe for the birth mother to be a mom, I salute you. We support the often misunderstood and lonely experience of the mother of children with special needs. 

15 Inspirational Mother's Day Quotes 

Mother's Day is an emotionally complex day. My hope is that wherever and whenever moms need to be celebrated, elevated, appreciated, supported, remembered, prayered for, or fought for, they are, each of them, today and every day. 

Happy Mother's Day!