Oh gosh, I can’t believe I am writing this…
This has been one of those topics and feelings I have kept inside for so long and I think now is a good time to get it out.
So let’s start this out…I don’t have a great relationship with my own mother. In fact, we don’t have a relationship at all.
I am writing this for anyone who doesn’t have a mother for ANY reason.
For so long, I would get anxious over Mother’s Day. As soon as I would see Mother’s Day commercials, cards in the store, or hear people talking about their Mother’s Day plans, I would get heart palpitations.
I was a mom, myself, but for some reason, I let not having a mom around get the best of me. Every Mother’s Day commercial was a reminder, a gut punch, that my own mother wasn’t around. So, what do we do when we don’t like something? Run. Ok, not really what we SHOULD do, but I did. I ran away from the situation.
I would pick up shifts to work at the hospital or any job I could do. I remember people offering to work for me so I wouldn’t have to work on Mother’s Day and I would tell them that no, I chose to work this day. They would look at me funny when I said that, like what mother WANTS to work on Mother’s Day?
I would work 16-hour shifts just so I could be gone all day long. I would put my mind and time on other things so that way it never came back to me.
I worked every single Mother’s Day for eight years.
My sweet husband would do everything he could to make it special for me, but I would make it nearly impossible. I got up early, left for work, and came home late. Here I was, being a mother and not celebrating Mother’s Day and not letting my husband show love to the mother of his children.
For some reason, I became a mother and forgot that this day was also about me. I forgot that I earned this day just like anyone else and that I should embrace it. Seriously, so many of my friends and fellow moms still forget this fact. They spend so much time celebrating their own mother and not enough of themselves.
My lightbulb moment came because of a friend. I mentioned to a friend that I was working on Mother’s Day and she asked why. “Well, I always do, I don’t love Mother’s Day because it reminds me that I don’t have a mom around so I just avoid it,” I said.
My friend said, “Well, what about your kids?”
I didn’t have an answer. I wasn’t really sure what they thought about me working, I wasn’t sure what they did the whole day and I didn’t know how this impacted them. My friend threw the lightbulb moment in my face. “Farin, your kids need to be able to celebrate you, they need to know that this day is important.”
She was right. She was 100% right. She was 1,000% right. I am their mother and it doesn’t matter if my mother is around or not, they need to be able to see what an important day this is. They need to see me smile, be happy, embrace the day, be thankful for them and be thankful to be a mother.
I have the ability to change all the mother/child feelings that I have in my own family and make things how I want them for my own children.
I know that Mother’s Day can be hard on people. I know there are losses that we are upset about, there are parents that we miss, and there are times that are tough. I know that sometimes Mother’s Day can be a hard day to celebrate. However, when we are moms, we have this amazing opportunity to receive love, show our children what it is like to be appreciated, what we want our sons to do for their future wives and our daughters to do when they have children of their own.
I haven’t worked a Mother’s Day since my friend called me out on it. She even texts me every single Mother’s Day (and most holidays) to remind me that these special moments are now about me and my own little family and I shouldn’t let anyone being there or not being there stop that.
I am writing this to remind YOU, moms, that you are WORTHY of celebrating.
It is ok to have sad moments and you are allowed to feel how you feel, but you also deserve the love, gifts, pampering, and mimosas that every other mother receives. You deserve the absolute BEST day that YOU want, no matter what that entails.
One day, your children are going to look back on these Mother’s Days and remember how they brought you scribbled cards, cute pictures, flowers picked from the neighbors lawn, breakfast in bed, gave you extra hugs, extra love, and they will remember mostly that you were there embracing every minute of it. They will remember that YOU, momma, were the reason they celebrated and that means EVERYTHING.
“There’s no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.”
– Jill Churchill
