Mothers' Day Mournings

Photo by Liv Bruce on Unsplash

Mother’s Day is a lovely tribute to mothers, but, it’s an incredibly challenging day for many of us-

Because it’s a day saturated in grief: for those whose moms have passed on, those with moms who abandoned us, abused us, or deeply hurt us, those of us who weren’t able to become mothers, and the list goes on and on.

My mother is gone. Grandmothers too.

And sure, we can easily scoff about these Hallmark holidays, but with rampant consumerism and advertising in American capitalist culture -

We are inundated with constant reminders of this day that is coming up -

And what some of us don’t have that many others do have.

I remember a Mother’s Day in recent years where I spent the entire day drunk.

I chose to stuff down my feelings of hurt and pain and loss, my beloved mother’s death, wrapped up in the too-close-to-it death of my brother and then my babies -

Afterwards, I felt worse. Of course.

It was so incredibly painful, to miss her, to feel those losses.

But there’s no other way around the grief and loss.

They are intensely powerful emotions but they have to be felt and experienced so that we can help them to do what they should do -

To move throughout us. To release the feelings.

If we hinder that process, we are stuck with them.

We hurt ourselves in doing so.

Even if/when your method of repression didn’t involve a bottle (or two) of wine. You may have another method of stuffing it down that works for you. think too few of us sit with the feelings of grief without—at least sometimes—shoving them down or ignoring them, or tabling them with a ‘not now’ mindset.

You may think mine worse. It wasn’t great, I admit it.

But no method of repression really serves anyone.

I am reminded of many days of mourning I get all through the year - There are so many occasions that are cause for mourning: Mothers’ Day, Fathers’ Day, birthdays of my parents and brother, National Sibling Day, death-versaries, and other holidays that are normally spent with family.

Many times in the calendar year I am reminded that I have occasion to mourn.

It’s hard. It hurts. It’s painful.

The alternative is worse though.

And to only focus on the pain of it is also to forget the reason why we feel the pain -

We feel the pain because we loved. Because we had the gift of being loved -

Grief is the love with nowhere to go. (Marisa Renee Lee)

This is why it burns, deep.

My mother would call me Smelly Belly. She loved hearts, Pepsi, the ocean, and she was an amazing cook and had an incredible talent for crafts.

She took her pain and transmitted it into amazing maternal love and care for kids in her school that were the ones disregarded, by other teachers, who had a difficult family life or they were having a hard time.

I realize that not all people do this -

Not even all mothers.

I think the testament of a person’s character is often this -

Can you transcend the pain inflicted on you - to do better for others -

These ‘others’ may include - your children, students, friends, or whoever else is in your life.

Or do you dig your heels in and try to bring others down - in that ol’ misery loves company idea.

Some people do.

Not all mothers, or fathers, are kind. Or good people. Or are mature enough and evolved enough to realize that they ought to want/work towards making sure that their kids have better than they had.

I know some of these adults with wounds because their parents are the type of people who are so emotionally insecure and traumatized that they bite and hurt others, to try to protect themselves, even when those that they hurt are their own flesh and blood. Even when it’s their own child, whom they were tasked to protect.

I mourn for those people today too. With parents, with mothers, like that.

And, in that mourning, I also practice gratitude, because even if my mother only exists in my memories and heart, though I feel her energy, I miss her body and conversations. I mourn her deeply.

But, I had her. I always will.

That is much more than many others have.