Mother's Day: A Painful Day?

As a child, I really enjoyed Mother's Day. I would take out my chalk and mark up the sidewalk in front of our house and our neighbor's house in giant letters, spelling out the words 'Happy Mother's Day.'

If any neighbors of mine did not have children right away, I in my innocence assumed they were having difficulty and prayed for them to have children.

There was an event recently that I attended where mothers were honored. And as I watched all the mothers take the dais, what went through my mind was: Mother's Day is really hard on some people.

Because now I know. I've been introduced to the world where people I know, people I am friends with, are struggling to become mothers, to stay mothers.

There is an individual that I know, who I went to school with, who has been struggling to become a mother over the past five years. Not only has she been struggling with infertility, but she has also been struggling with the death of her children once they were born. You can read an incredibly soul-wrenching post that she wrote here. I look at her, at her struggle, at her journey, and I just think that Mother's Day must feel like a punch in the gut to her. She must look at all the advertisements, the cards, balloons and happy flowers, and it must just hurt.

Then we have another friend who lost her daughter to SIDS. She wrote about her daughter here and about learning how to mother again after losing her daughter to SIDS here.  This woman is now a mother to other adorable children, but I imagine that every Mother's Day, as her children present her with her cards and gifts, she remembers her other child, her daughter, and that this hurts, too.

And this is to say nothing of the children who have lost their mothers. I have a good friend whose mother died of cancer, and it must be hard to watch the world as a whole celebrate this day while missing your own parent.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have this holiday or shouldn't appreciate our mothers. But I now have a different perspective on it. The holiday that brings so much joy to some causes pain to others. I feel it's appropriate to publicly note and honor those individuals struggling to become mothers, struggling to mother through the pain of losing a child, or struggling because they do not have a living mother. For them, too, it's Mother's Day- but their associations with the day may be much sadder.

If it is at all possible on this day to reach out to someone you know who might be struggling, that might be appropriate as well. Just to say: Hey. I know this day is hard on you. I'm there for you. I love you. Tomorrow will be a better (and hopefully less painful) day.