To the Moms Who Don’t Feel Like Celebrating this Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day is almost upon us. The flower shops and the “forever jewelry” ads are out. The brunch reservations are filling up and all around the world, schools are turning your children’s handprints into caterpillars and flowers and birds.
It’s an occasion for hoopla. And we moms have earned it. We have birthed and raised tiny people that are slowly, but surely, turning into bigger people. We feed and clothe and love and discipline in equal measure. We read the nutrition labels on the granola bars and sometimes we even make them from scratch. We sign up for Mommy-and-Me classes and sometimes we even go. We donate outgrown clothes and we recycle. We brush teeth and buckle seatbelts and monitor fevers and check homework and pack lunches.
So, yes, we deserve to be celebrated on Mother’s Day, but some years are harder than others.
Sometimes winter lingers and sucks all the antibodies and ability to rally out of our bodies. The cold gray days, even in May, make us wish we could hide under the covers until the pools open. Sometimes the children are going through a phase that begins and ends with, “I don’t care.” Or it might be the first year without your own mother. Or the first year after divorce. Or the year your child is in the hospital fighting for health. Or the year the kids have grown and gone. Or the year you have just gone back to work. Or quit work. Or started working from home.
Whatever the reason, the pressure can build as Mother’s Day approaches for you to feel like you are acing your mom-game. It’s worse than Valentine’s Day, in a way. There’s nothing like looking around at all the other happily nesting newbie mothers or happily crafty Pinterest moms or happy functioning families of older kids and wonder…what am I doing wrong? It’s easy to second-guess your choices and your attitude and your ability to care for yourself, much less your family.
But here’s the thing that is just as true on Mother’s Day as it is every other day of the year: you are doing every single thing you should to be the mother that your children need you to be. No matter what laundry list you can review of your own faults, you are doing the best you can. No matter how loudly you yelled yesterday or how short you cut bedtime tonight, you will start new tomorrow. And you deserve as much grace as you remind yourself to give your children.
And so, if all you want to do this Mother’s Day is get a pedicure while drinking champagne withoutthe kids, then so be it. Sleep until ten. Order in. Phone a friend. Watch a movie marathon with the family and forget the Instagrammable picture.
