There is a movement in recent years to do away with celebrating Mother’s Day. It’s a fair argument that Mother’s Day has become too commercialized. It’s also important to consider how Mother’s Day is achingly painful for so many people:
Those who have lost children.
Those who have lost mothers.
Those who have suffered abuse, infertility, and broken relationships.
My heart hurts for women who have lost a child and are getting through the hours of this day. My breath catches a little as I type that sentence, just thinking of their loss. It’s a wound so painful, I want to turn from thinking of it, yet they live with it every day. I can’t begin to know that type of pain, and I won’t pretend I do.
I can relate to other painful motherhood experiences. I’m a foster mom who has said goodbye to over 30 foster children. Those losses crushed pieces of my heart in ways I am still trying to understand. Like a heart bypass, I learn to adapt and continue, but the damaged areas remain and will always, with little names written on each.
As an adoptive parent, I share the title of “mom” with two birth mothers, and in the darker lonely times of night, I am forced to admit the tentacles of jealousy have wrapped around my heart. I don’t always want to share.
