Happiness

For Everyone Who Finds Mother's Day Difficult

Share with a Friend

The world makes Mother's Day look like one thing. Brunch reservations, flower deliveries, and posts with captions that say “best friend,” “partner in crime,” and “the woman who made me who I am.” And if that is your reality, I am genuinely happy for you. Hold onto it.

But if it isn't, if your mom is gone, or if the relationship is complicated, or something you've had to grieve in a completely different way, the noise of Mother’s Day weekend can make you feel incredibly alone. Like everyone else received something that you didn't. Like you're supposed to feel a certain way and you just don't. Or you feel it all too much and there's nowhere to put any of it.

This is for you.

I lost my mom when I was 20 years old. She died the day after Christmas from breast cancer that came back fast and moved faster. My brother was 16. My dad, my brother, and I were suddenly three people in a brand new city where we barely knew anyone, planning a funeral. And I have spent the last 35 years doing everything without her.

My first job, my first apartment, both of my weddings, my divorce, finding the person I was supposed to find, writing a book, going through menopause without her roadmap. That conversation most women get to have with their mothers where someone sits you down and says here's what's coming and here's what it was like for me, I never had that. I went through the whole thing alone.

Every Mother's Day I get through it, and after 35 years of carrying this, here is what I have actually learned…

1. Grief doesn't move in a straight line and nobody should tell you it does.

There is this idea that grief follows stages and timelines and that if you just move through the process correctly you will arrive somewhere on the other side where it no longer catches you off guard. That is not how this works.

I can be in a grocery store, years and years removed from losing her, and a song comes on and it undoes something completely out of nowhere. For a long time I would think, what is wrong with me? I already went through this, I already healed from this.

Nothing is wrong with you. Grief moves more like an ocean than a calendar. It can go quiet for long stretches and then a wave comes and knocks you out flat. That is not evidence that you aren't healing, that is just what this is. Anyone who tells you otherwise probably hasn't been here.

2. We don't move on, we move forward.

Those two things sound almost identical and they are completely different.

Moving on implies leaving her behind and closing the chapter. Moving forward means you carry that person into every new thing. My mom doesn't get smaller as my life gets bigger, she is at every significant moment. Just not the way I would love her to be.

This distinction has been one of the most important things I've held onto because I spent a long time feeling guilty about still feeling it. Like I should have moved on by now or like continuing to miss her was somehow holding me back. It wasn't, it was just love.

3. Say her name.

Talk about her and tell the stories. As long as you are speaking her name and sharing who she was, you are keeping something alive that does not have to die just because she did.

This one took me a long time. I spent years trying to outrun the grief, staying busy, covering it up, not looking directly at it. What I eventually learned through real work, in therapy, in conversation, in sitting still long enough to actually feel it, is that the only way through is through. You cannot outrun the wave because it will find you, and letting it come when it comes is so much less exhausting than trying to stay ahead of it.

4. The grief is the love.

A neuroscientist named Wendy Suzuki said something to me that I thought about all weekend after she said it. She had lost her father and her brother within months of each other. What she eventually understood through the grief was that she couldn't feel the depth of that pain without there having been the depth of that love. When she finally understood that the grief was just the love with nowhere to go, she exhaled.

If you are in a lot of pain during this season, it is because you loved a lot. That is evidence of something really beautiful that you had. You don't have to minimize it or rush through it or be anywhere other than exactly where you are with it.

For women whose mothers are alive but the relationship is complicated…

I want to say this directly because I think it gets left out of the conversation.

Grieving what you didn't have is just as legitimate as grieving someone who is gone. Grieving the mother you needed and didn't get, the version of the relationship you watched other people have and hoped for yourself, the comfort that was never there, that grief is real and it deserves the same space and the same compassion.

You are not less than because your mother is still alive and you don't have to pretend it doesn't hurt just because you can't point to a date on a calendar.

Kelly McDaniel, who wrote a book called Mother Hunger, identified three essential elements of maternal love: nurturance, protection, and guidance. And she found in her clinical work that when any one of those three things is missing, you feel it. A constant low level of anxiety you can't locate the source of. A feeling of not having an internal compass for your own choices. A longing for touch and belonging that you can't quite explain.

Those three things can be found elsewhere and are not too old or too late for any of them. Nurturance can come from a friend who sees you and shows up. Protection can come from someone who helps you feel safe in the world. Guidance can come from an older woman who helps you trust your own instincts.

I have found all three of those things in people I never predicted. A colleague who checked on me more than she had any obligation to during my divorce. A therapist who helped me understand myself. Friends who became family. It doesn't replace your mother, but you can build something that holds you in some of those ways.

What to actually do on Mother’s Day…

1. Don't try to outrun it. I have spent years staying busy and pushing through and not looking directly at it. The wave will find you anyway. Letting it come when it comes is less exhausting than trying to stay ahead of it. Cry through it if you need to, feel it, and move through it.

2. Move your body. I know that sounds like something people say when they don't know what else to say, but when grief sits in you it can feel like a tightness you can't breathe through. Getting outside, moving even a little, tells your nervous system something different. It doesn't take the grief away, but it loosens something enough to let you breathe.

3. Write to her. Sit down with actual paper and write her a letter. Tell her what's been happening. Tell her what you miss. Tell her what you're proud of. Tell her what you're angry about if that's somewhere in you. You don't have to send it anywhere, but the act of writing is its own kind of release. For women with complicated living relationships, you can write to the mother you needed even if she isn't the mother you have. That letter is for you, it’s not for her.