Phases of Mother's Day

I’m writing this on Mother’s Day 2022. Every year I feel something different on this day. Some years I’m extremely sad and miss my mom so much it hurts. Other years I’m perfectly fine and smile throughout the day. This year I’m somewhere in between because this day hits on many different levels for me.

As a daughter, I’m hurt, angry, frustrated, and sad that I can’t take my mom out for brunch or dinner today. I can’t even call her to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day. I can’t try to find the perfect gift. I can’t plan a weekend getaway with just the two of us. I see other people showing pictures of all the things they’re doing with their moms and I’m mappy about it. I’m mad and happy. I’m TRULY happy that so many can share the day with their moms. But I’m also mad that I don’t have mine. Sometimes I wonder what I did that was so bad that God had to take my mom from me. I wonder if other people who lost their moms so young feel the same. I feel robbed. I feel abandoned. I feel lost some days. It just seems so unfair. I know there are a lot of folks who lost their moms young like I did, and I just wonder if they have these thoughts too. Then I look at my friends who lost their moms later in life. Even my husband. We lost my mother-in-law about 17 years ago. She was like a second mother to me, and it hurt no less losing her at that age. Actually, I take that back. There was some comfort in knowing that my kids knew her and STILL talk about her today and share memories of her. My husband was able to have his mother there to see graduations, marriages, birth of all her grandchildren. So, I take comfort in that. It does ease the blow some. But the loss of a mother is a deep pain regardless of how old you are when you lose her. You just never stop needing or wanting your mom.

As a mom, I’m extremely happy because of the people who made it possible to celebrate this day. I absolutely love and adore my children. I am blessed to have them in my life and that I’m able to share so many memories with them. I’m so proud of the people they’ve become. Each time I hear a code being punched into our lock at the front door, I smile inside because I know it’s one of them. I don’t know if I like it more when I know they’re coming or if the pop ups bring me more joy. I think I like the drop ins. It lets me know that they were just thinking about me and wanted to come by. Those are the best visits. It’s nothing better than having one of them come and blop on the couch and just talk. I love hearing the stories of their lives. I love them asking for advice. I love the funny things they say, do and the things that happen to them. I love guiding them through their struggles. I just love them and everything about them. I get an overwhelming sense of happiness for the mothers who are celebrating for the first time or the ones who went thru hell and high water to become mothers. Whether it was thru years of trying or adoption. What an awesome feeling today must bring to those women. I seemed to get pregnant if Eric even looked at me, so I don’t know the struggles those women faced. But I know what it feels like when you hold your child for the first time, so I imagine it being on TEN with those women. So, I’m sure today is extra special for them. I also feel a little sad being a mother on this day too because I know there are so many wonderful women who want to be mothers and aren’t. I can’t imagine the struggles and the pain they must feel on this day. Or worse yet if they lost their child/children. I can’t and DON’T WANT to know that pain. My heart and prayers go out to those women.

As a grandmother, I’m absolutely overjoyed on Mother’s Day. Not only because of my grandchildren, that’s a whole post in itself. Those little people and now not so little people, bring me such a sense of calm, peace, and happiness. I literally feel like my heart is going to explode with the love I have for them. Grandchildren are just so special and seem to fill a part of yourself that you didn’t even know was missing. But it’s not just the grandchildren that bring me joy in this phase, it’s seeing my daughters as mothers. There’s a sense of pride and comfort when you see your grandchildren happy. It lets me know that my daughters are great moms when I see my grandchildren flourishing. I see a lot of how we raised them in how they’re raising their kids. But I also see a lot that they do differently and that gives me a great sense of pride. I LOVE that they’re not repeating all the mistakes we made. I love that they’re doing it their way and not listening to what the world may tell them. I also love to see the things we did right shine through them. I love seeing my daughter raise CONFIDENT, STRONG little women. My youngest granddaughter is going to be a FORCE to be reckoned with. I know some of that is genetics, but I also know a lot of that is how my daughter is teaching her NOW how to stand up for herself and speak her mind. Both of our daughters are very strong, opinionated women so it’s great to see it shine thru my granddaughters. Our youngest daughter is raising a son. What I’m most proud of with them is that she has given him a voice at a young age. She’s teaching him to be a man but she’s also not using the world’s definition of what that looks like. He is allowed to show every emotion, every feeling WHEN he feels it and he voices it. If he’s sad, he tells us. If he wants to be alone, he tells us. If he is angry, he SHOWS and tells us. She’s preparing him mentally now and it’s AWESOME to see in action. We didn’t necessarily teach our kids to voice their emotions to us, however, we never told them to stop being angry when they were mad with us. We never forced them to speak to us when they didn’t want to. I spoke on this in a previous post about how some folks thought it was disrespectful for children to come in the house and not speak. We didn’t see it that way. We thought it was disrespectful for them to fake their feelings with us. If they were mad and didn’t want to speak, they didn’t have to. I see them teaching that same behavior in their children but in a different way and it’s beautiful to watch.

So today I’m going to sit in every one of these phases and feel every emotion. I’m going to cry, be angry, be sad and then I’ll be happy, feel an abundance of love and smile. And I’m sure I’ll feel all these feelings in every phase. I’ll be happy at the memories of my mom and thinking about how she would feel today if she were alive. She would be THRILLED to see her daughters being mothers and grandmothers. I’ll be a little sad on this day in the mom phase because I miss the kids being little and coming in on Mother’s Day with their homemade gifts and bringing me the breakfast they made in bed. I’ll be proud in the grandmother phase thinking about how my daughters are raising my grandchildren. They are doing such an awesome job.

As you go through today, I hope you allow yourself to experience all the emotions in whatever phase you happen to be in. I pray you find happiness and joy today even if there are moments of sadness. I pray if your mother is alive that you in a position to be able to hug her and if not in person, then she feels the love thru the phone, zoom or facetime. Happy Mother’s Day! May you all be safe, be blessed and be a blessing.