This Sunday
Mother’s Day. I had expectations. At least a call. Maybe a card. Flowers were out of the question since we are all in different countries. Believe it or not we used to celebrate three different Mother’s Days. The pleasure and the pain of being an international family.
I know what this weekend looks like for a lot of you. The cards in the shops. The brunch reservations. The social media posts that will start Sunday morning and not stop. Everyone celebrating something that for you this year — maybe for several years now — carries a different weight entirely.
You are a mother. That has not changed. The estrangement does not change that. But the world this Sunday will not make much room for the kind of Mother’s Day you are having.
I want to make some room here.
Here is the one practical thing I want to give you for this weekend.
When the pain spikes — and it will, probably more than once — do not reach for your phone to contact your child. Not to remind them it is Mother’s Day either. Decisions made in the sharpest moments of pain rarely take you where you actually want to go.
Instead, write it down. Everything you would say. All of it, unsent. Your brain needs somewhere to put the pain. So put it somewhere that isn’t her inbox.
Then put your phone in another room.
That is enough for Sunday. You do not have to do anything else.
You are not less of a mother because she is not with you this weekend.
You are a mother who is carrying something most people around you cannot see or understand. That is not weakness. That is an enormous amount of silent endurance.
I see it. I know what it costs.
If this weekend gets hard and you want to talk, my door is open. mercedescuecoaching@gmail.com
With you in this,
— Mercedes
Mother’s Day became hard for me. I have 5 children. Many went by without so much as a card or phone call. Now, I kind of just wait for it to be over.
"You are not less of a mother because she is not with you this weekend."
I appreciate this message.