This year, Mother’s Day carries a different weight for me. It’s the first one without my mom.
Grief is such a strange and transformative thing—it shows up in waves, in quiet moments, in places I least expect it. I’m learning slowly that missing her is just a different way of loving her now. And while this day may be wrapped in flowers and framed in love, it can also weigh heavy on our hearts.
So I just want to say this:
Whatever Mother’s Day brings up for you — joy, grief, tension, longing, relief, exhaustion — there’s space for it. There’s room for the complicated, the unspoken, the imperfect, and the beautiful.
Some of us have the kind of relationship with our moms that feels like friendship, safety, and home. Others carry distance, tension, or wounds that still hurt. Some are mourning moms who’ve passed, while others are watching theirs face illness with quiet bravery. Maybe your mom is the greatest grandmother in the world, or maybe her presence in your life — or your children’s — is complicated and disappointing. All of those realities deserve acknowledgment.
Maybe you are being celebrated yourself! Maybe you’re aching to become a mom, walking the path of IVF, or carrying the invisible weight of miscarriage. Maybe you’re in a loving two-mom household or two-dad household, maybe you're a single mom holding it all together or grew up with no mom at all. Maybe you’re figuring out what motherhood means to you in a world that doesn’t always recognize every version of it.
You don’t need to justify where you are or who you are. You don’t need to compare your story to anyone else’s.
To the mothers, the mother figures, the grieving, the trying, the hoping, the remembering — I see you. I’m with you. You’re not alone in how you’re feeling—whatever that feeling is.
Mother’s Day doesn’t look the same for all of us. But love? That shows up in all kinds of forms. And that’s something worth honoring, in whatever way feels right to you.
And to my mom, my biggest cheerleader, who printed out my Mother’s Day blog post 3 years ago that hung on her fridge until the day she passed: Happy Mother's Day. Xx
