Mother’s Day: It’s Complicated and That’s Okay

Mother’s Day is just around the corner. For many, it’s an exciting day. Maybe it’s your first Mother’s day as a mama and maybe that’s exciting and something to celebrate. Maybe you and your partner are preparing something special to celebrate your journey into Motherhood and you can’t wait.

I’m not a mother, yet. I’d like to be one day. I’m the Social Media Manager at Ergobaby and as I prepare posts and thoughts for Mother’s Day, I find myself with tears in my eyes and a knot in my stomach. This day for me is, well, complicated at best. I think it’s complicated for a lot of us. It’s not all rainbows and butterflies and sunshine as our newsfeed might suggest.

Mother’s Day for me on Instagram can feel a bit like an emotional landmine as all the photos exuding love and connection between mother’s and daughters fill my feed. There’s pain that wasn’t always my experience with my mother and there’s pain I haven’t yet given birth. 

For many of us, it’s important to acknowledge: Mother’s Day can be a day of grief and mixed emotions. What about the mamas that lost a child? What about the daughters that lost their mothers? What about the women that never really felt like she had a mother to begin with? There’s a lot of pressure in this day to feel love, to feel gratitude, and to appreciate Motherhood.

I want to take a moment to say: let this day be whatever you need it to be. Maybe there’s joy and happiness and love in your heart for your child and you’re sincerely grateful to be a mother. Maybe it’s that and you also have grief and pain for a mama you are missing or the mother you never had. Maybe you envy those whose picture-perfect moments fill your feed. Maybe your heart is aching for the baby you lost as you also celebrate the new bundle of love and life you get to call your child. Maybe there’s pain you’re not yet a Mother. Maybe you’re struggling with your mental health right now and have mixed feelings about being a mother. Whatever Mother’s Day is or isn’t for you, it’s all okay. There’s room and space for the joy and the grief. It’s okay to talk about and feel the other side of Mother’s Day.

If you need to cry today, cry. If you need to celebrate, celebrate. If you want to do both, do both. If you need to hide on Sunday and pretend it’s not Mother’s Day, that’s totally okay. From one woman to another for which this day is complicated, I give you permission to love yourself enough to ask for what you need from your loved ones for this day, whatever that may be. 

For me, suffice it to say, Mother’s Day is complicated. While I hope to be a mama one day and fill the day with love and joy and new memories, I think it might always be a complicated day for me and I’m at peace with that. From me to you, I hope you may find peace with whatever your Mother’s Day is this year. I’ll be spending my Mother’s Day in the mountains and taking the day off of Instagram.

If the day after Mother’s Day is hard for you, well we wrote a little something about that, too.

Photo credit here.