Motherhood changes a person internally and externally. The current societal standards do not accept the outward changes, and they don’t understand the inward ones. To become a mother is to change a person as much as metamorphosis changes a caterpillar into a butterfly. We become unrecognizable. We become beautiful.
Many times motherhood begins with a pregnancy, but as millions of mothers around the world know, that is not the only way to become a mother. And no matter what the method – adoption, birth, IVF, surrogacy – motherhood is the most incredible task we will ever face. And I know many, many beautiful women who choose not to have children by any method, and I love you for being who you are and for knowing who you are and I honor, you, too, on Mother’s Day. For being a mother to your friends or to their children or to your fur babies. Truly motherhood can look like so many different things to all of us.
And then there are mothers, like myself, who do not have mothers. Or mothers, also like myself, who have/had difficult relationships with their mothers. I know how much this can complicate your feelings about this day. I support you and I love you in all your various, conflicting, and very real, and reasonable, and perfect feelings about this day and about your mothers. As I learned while attending Al-Anon meetings many years ago, feelings are neither bad nor good, they just are. You are allowed to have many complex and conflicting and “bad” or “wrong” feelings about today. And you are allowed to talk about them today, on this day of celebration, if you need to.
So today for all the mamas holding your newborns, or calling your grown children, or waiting with baited breath to hold your own child or to hear that a child is waiting for you, for all the mamas calling your mamas, or unable to call your mamas, for all the women who do not call themselves mamas but love their mama friends and family just as fiercely, I want to wish you a beautiful Mother’s Day.
You are beautiful inside and out. Your story is beautiful through and through. Happy Mother’s Day to you, my friends.