Do you secretly hate mother’s day? This holiday is NOT about where are we going to get the best brunch. Here’s how you can start enjoying Mother’s Day again.
I have a confession to make. It’s kind of embarrassing. As much as I talk about gratitude and radical acceptance, Mother’s Day has (in the past) been a set up for failure for me. I even kind of dread it. Every year, it brings out a side of myself that I don’t like that much.
It’s become even harder since my divorce. As a single mom, there’s no other adult in the house to make sure the kids do something nice for you. Single mamas have to plan the celebration for yourself by yourself. To me, it feels lonely. My kids are awesome. It’s not them. It’s me. I want to be with my own mom, but she lives on the other side of the country. I feel resentful of all the ways that my life doesn’t match up to how I thought it should be…. You know, the Norman Rockwell image of family life I dreamed of. I get pouty. It’s not attractive or evolved.
So many of my clients also have problems with this day.
There are the women who are in relationships that lack appreciation and love. They feel even less appreciated on this particular day.
Even some happily married women suffer when their spouses don’t meet some minimum requirement. They usually have a lot of guilt on top of this because they think that they “should” feel blessed and happy all day.
Even tougher to bear is Mother’s Day for women who have lost their mothers.
And what about all the women out there who really want or wanted to have children and can’t…
And mothers who have lost a child…
Let’s face it, Mother’s Day is really awful for a LOT of women everywhere. There have been years that it made me angry that we even celebrate it. It seems like it just rubs salt in some of our deepest collective wounds.
This year, however, I came across something in a blog post by Marie Forleo that transformed my view of Mother’s Day and I hope it will help you too.
First of all, I learned that the original purpose of Mother’s Day was not about showing appreciation for your own mother. This really surprised me. I knew the original purpose was not buying cards and going to breakfast, but I did not know how truly distorted this holiday has become until now.
The original purpose of Mother’s Day was actually to bring recognition of the importance of mothering in the world. There is a movement going on now called “Take Back Mother’s Day” launched by the Compassion Collective. Here is a quote from their website:
Mother’s Day was not created by Hallmark, but by a revolutionary warrior for peace. Julia Ward Howe — abolitionist, activist and poet — was the founder of the original Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870. Tired of war, tired of tribalism being valued above the lives of the vulnerable, her pain became her mission. She called out for revolution.
She called the day of the revolution: MOTHER’S DAY.
This really hit me. It made me realize that….
A MOTHERING revolution is what the world needs in order to heal.
This is what Mother’s Day is about: REVOLUTION. How can we better mother the world? How can we appreciate that we as mothers are the ticket to healing the world? How can we take greater responsibility for all the children because, “there is no such thing as other people’s children.”
This holiday is NOT about where are we going to get the best brunch! This transformed my entire conceptualization of Mother’s Day. When Mother’s Day is about sending compassion, love and healing out into the world to help all the children (young and old), there really is no room for resentment or disappointment. I feel only gratitude for all the blessings that life has showered onto me and enthusiasm to share those blessings with others.
If you want to contribute to the movement, you can find their link to make a donation on my FB page. It’s called the Compassion Collective and they are doing amazing work to help both refugees internationally and homeless youth here at home. Their maximum donation is $25. Any amount helps. It is a zero overhead group so you can be sure your gift counts and goes right where it’s needed most.
Think about it for a minute…how would our world be better if we all, men and women, women with children and without, together, began to consciously and deliberately embody these qualities of the great mother in the world. What would the world look like? How would your own behavior change? Take a minute to write your thoughts in the comments below. Your Mother will thank you!
My intention with this blog moving forward is to explore and provide helpful content on issues of mothering, parenting, single parenting and co-parenting, spirituality in daily life, yoga, mindfulness, self-compassion, gratitude, healthy divorce, break ups, trauma, and getting through life’s big challenges. Please sign up below if any of this resonates with you and share this post on your favorite social media by clicking the share buttons above. Lets get this message out there in a bigger way and turn this Mother’s Day into an act of caring for the world.
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