A Love Letter: For All The Ways We Mother & All The Ways We Weren't Mothered Well Enough

A Mother's Day Blessing For Conventional & Unconventional Mothers

I arrived back in San Francisco late last night, just in time for Mother’s Day with my family. Jet lagged and still on London time, I crashed in bed and then awoke at 4am to find wildflowers adorned with poetry about wildflowers all over my house, planted there to wow me when I woke up by my 17 year old daughter. There were wildflowers and poems by my bedside, by the coffee pot, in my computer, in my underwear drawer, on the toilet, in the refrigerator, on the bin of dog food, all over the main living spaces- basically everywhere I might meander in a jetlagged daze in the middle of the night when I’m not on the right time zone. My daughter knew I was sad to miss most of my favorite wildflower season in the Bay Area because I’ve been in Europe for three weeks, so she wanted to honor me as her mother in the most creative and enchanting of ways. I was absolutely overjoyed and delighted.

But I know as an OB/GYN and trauma researcher that not every woman or child wakes up happy on Mother’s Day, so Mother’s Day can be an unacknowledged trigger for many. Not every woman feels adequately honored for the unconventional ways women mother, not everyone is capable of honestly celebrating their own mother, not every mother has a happy relationship with her own children, and not all of our mothers or children survived.

This is a blessing in honor of all the ways we hold mothers in our hearts, all the ways we are mothering, and all the ways we’ve been traumatized by mothers and mothering.

If you have given birth to children you’re still close with, who are still with us, we honor you and all the sacrifices you make as a mother. Happy Mother’s Day!

If you are expecting a child, we honor you. Happy Mother’s Day.

If you are close with your mother and she’s still with us, Happy Mother’s Day to you.

If you are mothering a fur baby, Happy Mother’s Day and thank you for pouring your love into your animal babies!

If you are mothering your own hurt parts and welcoming them back into the fold of your being, Happy Mother’s Day to you and all those young parts.

If you are mothering a child you adopted or a foster child or someone else’s children, we bless you for giving those children the mothers they might not have had otherwise.

If you are mothering your siblings or your parents, you deserve to be celebrated for the mothering you give, even if it’s not your job to do so.

If you are mothering a creative project or a business or some other way you give birth in the world, Happy Mother’s Day and thank you for the fertility of your womanly arts.

To those who are full of gratitude and joy for the roles we play as mothers, to those who are grateful for the good enough mothers who raised us, this can be a day of great happiness.

But it’s not a happy mother’s day for all of us, and we wish to honor all the other ways we are touched by Mother’s Day also.

If you tried to become a mother and couldn’t, we hold that heartbreak tenderly with you.

If you got pregnant but lost your pregnancy, we honor that loss with open hearts.

If you gave birth but your child didn’t make it, or if you only got to be with your child for a short while, only to lose that child before his or her time, we can only begin to imagine the pain of that devastating loss. We honor you on this Mother’s Day.

If you birthed a child who is now estranged, we hold the mother in you tenderly and wish for a balm on that wound.

If you birthed a child to give away to someone else who couldn’t have one, we thank you for your gift.

If you were mothered by someone who didn’t know how to mother and this is not a day of celebration, we bless the parts of you that need remothering and hold out hope that those young parts find a good enough mother in the Divine Self inside you, as well as the mothering love of others who can give you what your mother couldn’t.

If you were abandoned by your mother or if your mother was there but not there, we hold you in our collective hearts.

If you were the mother of an unwanted pregnancy you terminated and bear the sorrow of that experience, we hold you to our bosom.

If you had a wonderful mother and your mother has passed, we grieve with you and honor this day. If you had a challenging mother who is hard to celebrate and she has passed, we honor you too.

If each Mother’s Day is a remembering of the mothering you wanted to do but couldn’t, we send a salve to your dream that didn’t come true.

If you’re a father or grandparent or on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum who is mothering because of choice or because there wasn’t a mother to do the job, we honor you on this Mother’s Day.

May all the mothers and all the mothered enjoy this blessing of mothers by John O’Donohue:

Mother,
Your voice learning to soothe
Your new child
Was the first home-sound
We heard before we could see.

Your young eyes
Gazing on us
Was the first mirror
Where we glimpsed
What to be seen
Could mean.

Mother,
Your nearness tilled the air,
An umbilical garden for all the seeds
Of thought that stirred in our infant hearts.

You nurtured and fostered this space
To root all our quietly gathering intensity
That could grow nowhere else.

Mother,
Formed from the depths beneath your heart,
You know us from the inside out.
No deeds or seas or others
Could ever erase that.

If I’ve missed any of the ways people can mother or any of the ways Mother’s Day can be triggering, we bless you too. Please feel free to add to this list in the comments and I’ll update it as we do. May this day touch your heart, through laughter, tears, memories, heartbreak, celebration, pride, grief, and any way the art of mothering has moved you.