For When Mother's Day is Hard

If It's Complicated Right Now, You Aren't Alone.

Mother’s Day and I have a complicated relationship. It’s a day where grief dances with gratitude.

It’s a little like my paint palette. There’s beauty even in the middle of all the messy splotches of colors threatening to combine into a sea of mud. It holds the history of many paintings and the promise of more to come.

Things are rarely one thing. If the last decade has taught me anything… it is that.

Grief can exist right alongside gratitude.

Ten years today I lost everything. 99% of my world was gone in a matter of days. Children I thought I’d be raising for the rest of my life. My home in Africa where I was working and living. My job, people I considered family, my dreams, my health, my reputation… and more than I can even begin to share. All for standing up to do the thing I had given 7 years of my life to— keep the children in my care safe.

Then, three years ago over Mother’s Day, less than 6 months after I lost my Dad, I lost my mom to a valiant years-long fight with cancer.

Mother’s Day reminds me of the brutality of loss and grief in ways I scarcely have language for. It still can sucker punch the air right out of me.

So if Mother’s Day is complicated for you too, I just wanted to let you know you aren’t alone.

For those who have lost children...

For those who have lost moms...

For those with strained, broken, or painful relationships...

For those grieving…

For those longing to be moms…

For those with family dynamics that are complicated…

For those who stand in as mamas…

For moms who are navigating war zones in Ukraine, Sudan, and even in their own homes…

For bonus moms, second moms, grand moms, adoptive moms, new moms, and moms to be…

For mamas of fur babies and many feathered creatures…

For teachers who care for their students like moms…

For single moms…

For women who have chosen not to be moms…

For mamas with health challenges…

For moms caring for children with health challenges…

For moms at the end of their ropes…

For moms who are caring for their moms…

For moms who are struggling…

And for moms whose worlds are beautiful and bright as well...

I see you. I’m grateful for you. The world would not be the same without you in it.

If today presses hard on trauma triggers, it is ok to go slow and be gentle with yourself.

To show yourself the same kind of compassion you would those you love.

For me personally, in this life season, “mother” has transformed from a noun to a verb.

To mother is to nurture. To be patient while things grow. To comfort and encourage. To care for others with the same generosity with which I would hope to be cared for.

To know there is beauty ready to rise even from the mud of a messy paint palette.

And that a decade of unimaginable loss is giving way to a new season of life and light.

I’m so grateful you are here.

All my love,

Michele