Reflections on Mother’s Day

Today is Mother’s Day in North America. And I want to reflect on what this day means to me, and perhaps to others.

I think about my relationship with my mother, and it’s…complex.

On one hand, I celebrate the mother I have. She sacrificed her whole life for her kids. She gave constantly. She never asked for anything in return. She’s the parent who stayed when my father abandoned the family.

On the other hand, the very things I am grateful for are the same things I am sad about.

She gave and she gave, but she didn’t know how to take care of herself. She was never given the opportunity to do so.

She was often tired. Often resentful. And that exhaustion came out sideways — in aggressive parenting, in being more functional than warm, more transactional than tender.

Love was mostly shown through the food on the table and paying for expenses.

I hold deep compassion for her. She was the firstborn of many, raising her younger siblings before she was old enough to be raised herself.

She was a little adult by the time she was still a child. She wasn’t nurtured. She was never held the way a little girl needs to be held. And so when she became a mother, she gave what she had — and what she had was survival, not softness.

There is no bitterness in me. Just a quiet sadness.

Sadness that a woman who was never nurtured couldn’t truly nurture her own kids.

Sadness that I had to learn how to be a soft, present mother from scratch when I had my own children — figuring out gentleness and warmth as if they were a language I had never been taught.

I love her. I grieve her. Both at the same time.

Maybe today, you are holding something similar.

Or maybe your relationship with your mom is close and warm and easy — what a gift.

Or maybe she is no longer here, and this day carries an ache that words can’t quite reach.

Or maybe she is still living, but the relationship is hard, and there is no clean way to feel about her today.

Wherever you find yourself, there is no right way to feel.

You can love her and celebrate the goodness that she is.

You can be grateful and still be sad.

You can not celebrate and wish things had been different.

So today, however you need to mark this day, honour what is true for you.

Whatever Mother’s Day stirs in you — joy, grief, gratitude, longing, or all of it tangled together — hold it gently. None of it is wrong. The most healing thing you can do today is simply allow what is true for you to be true, without needing to make it neat.