Come May, one can’t escape Mother’s Day. Everywhere you turn is a reminder to show a mother how much she’s loved with cards, tulips, jewelry or brunch. According to HISTORY television network (formerly The History Channel), the origins for this special holiday started years before the Civil War when Ann Reeves Jarvis helped start “Mother’s Day Work Clubs” to teach local women how to properly care for their children.
And all these years later, we’ve formally set aside a day to heap appreciation on mom for her proper care! It’s this “proper care” part, however, that gets messy and conflicting for some. If you’re a son or daughter for whom genuine and attentive maternal care — emotionally or physically— was and/or is still missing, Mother’s Day and its commercial expectations can exacerbate your ache. Add in the likelihood that so many places from restaurants to retail outlets to religious organizations make big deal of this day, it can heighten the loneliness. I wish to point out this pain is unique from that of losing a loving mother, premature or otherwise, and I call it the “unmothered heart.”
The unmothered heart longs/longed for more connection, more availability, more being seen, supported, and accepted by the one who birthed and/or raised them. Take my friend Matthew whose coming out severed all ties with his mom (his mom’s choice). Or my friend Jess who’s leaving a childhood faith removed her from her parents’ will. My own story was less sudden and more a chronic absorption of my mom’s disinterest in the role. “I never wanted to be a mother,” she told me repeatedly as a kid, a verbal rejection of the very presence I craved and needed given my challenging health issues. Psychotherapist Kelly McDaniel, author of the book Mother Hunger, speaks of the potential consequences of this unique attachment wound including low self-esteem, inability to trust, and difficulty identifying one’s needs.
If this is you — if Mother’s Day bring more heartache than happiness, you’re not alone. And you’re not without hope. I wish to offer you some nuggets from my own healing journey as well as from my work as a mental health counselor. It’s taken me decades to find peace for my own unmothered heart. While having my own children allowed me to reexamine and redefine the role of mothering, it was my own reclamation of self that brought me a new sense of worth and lovability as a woman and daughter. Perhaps Mother’s Day can be your chance use this day differently, less a celebration of another and more a chance to honor your own emotions and experiences.
Below are my Mother’s Day gifts to you —
Allow the Emotions to Exist As-is. Too often we guilt ourselves out of feeling why we do. I “should” reach out to her. “I should be grateful.” This self-gaslighting is often a response to trauma. There are reasons we feel the way we do. Believe yourself. Choose a trusted person to share your truest thoughts and/or write them in a private journal.
Separate your Identity from the Situation. It's easy to adopt a faulty belief about our worth when we feel we haven't experienced the love and nurturing we desired. Says the founders of narrative therapy, Michael White and David Epston, "the person isn't the problem, the problem is the problem." When we can separate our identity from the challenges we face, we can work to reauthor a more empowering story for ourselves as a mother and/or daughter or son. For example, "I am a capable and resilient person with an emotionally unavailable mother."
Link Your Emotions to Choice. It's easy to get caught up in the day's festivities, loving greeting cards and expectations for 24 hours dedicated to honoring mom. You don't have to do anything you don't want to. You don’t have to pretend the day is anything but another Sunday. Or, of you feel sad, mad, devalued, empty, annoyed or grief stricken, ask yourself, "What would feel like a loving way to honor my emotion?" There were several years I opted for a pedicure or hike. Often I’d engage in creative pursuits, an activity that always grounds me.
Recognize You Are a New Chapter! You were born into a story-in-progress, and you have a chance to rewrite your trajectory based on the plotline you inherited from ancestry. We derive our beliefs about ourselves much like adding two numbers equals an answer. What beliefs are you holding onto that simply aren’t true? Might it be an opportunity to assign a new meaning to the day? To honor your own resilience and beauty? So often we forget we have power to add internal momentum where we choose to.
Widen Your Definition of Mothering. To mother is to nurture, oversee, guide and care for. For whom do you extend these qualities? From whom do you receive them? When we widen our perspective, this allows us to celebrate the way we mother (and are mothered by) our pets and nature, our friends and other family members. Mothering is a wider concept than a single person in our life.