My history with Mother’s Day is not all roses.
Growing up my father instilled the importance of showing appreciation on Mother’s day. Every year I would make a trip to the greenhouse and spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to pick between identical yellow flowers. I would gift my mom the flowers and we would spend the day as a family. When I grew up my experience with Mother’s Day changed. I moved away and wasn’t always able to spend the day with my Mother. I always made a bid for connection and made sure I was able to show her appreciation, despite my inability to be physically present.
In my late 20’s my experience with motherhood changed. It went from being something that was a choice, to finding out that there was no decision to be made: I was unable to have kids. Mother’s Day became a day of recognizing what I wasn’t, as opposed to what I was. I was not entirely sure I even wanted to be a part of the sacred mom club but that one day a year I was reminded that I would never experience my own child picking out yellow flowers for me. The day left me feeling hollow, lonely and disappointing.
I eventually fell in love with a man who had a son. Every day felt different and Mother’s Day was no exception. This special day was all the things it was before (love and gratitude for my mother mixed with feelings of resolved disappointment with the past) however now there were new feelings as well. Feelings of inclusion, recognition of my maternal instincts, and pride for the hard work that I was putting into our home everyday.
The birth of a Mom
When I first became a "stepmom" I didn’t identify as being a “mom”. In my mind, our son had a mother and he didn’t need another. But children are remarkably accepting and our little guy taught me that two moms are better than one, more love can’t hurt, and support is always appreciation. Children have a limitless capacity for love and our child was no exception. Our child reserved a special role for me in our home and so I slowly embraced being a mom in our home. I nurtured, loved, and protected. I changed diapers, I kissed cuts and I read bedtime stories. On the eve of my first Mother’s Day as a stepmom, there were so many positive feelings and reasons to celebrate that I found myself feeling excited about the day.
Being part of a shared family means exactly that…learning how to share. We share days, we share moments, and we share intimate parts of our lives that we would normally desire to keep private. It is an almost unnatural existence of invisible boundaries and unmet expectations. On my first Mother’s Day I woke up to hugs, kisses and yellow flowers. I got lots of “I love you Aubin” (his first pronunciation of my name). Our extended family planned a Mother’s Day brunch and were thankful that our custody schedule allowed us to attend as a family. It was wonderful celebrating with the different generations of mothers within the family. However, there was a negative shadow that hung in the air, and it was on our driveway when we returned home.
Anger
In counselling I often speak about the Anger Iceberg. The Anger Iceberg illustrates the emotions that exist beneath the surface of Anger. So while anger very much showed up on our driveway later that day, what I saw was a myriad of emotions (disappointment, loneliness, insecurity, hurt, envy, shame and grief). I recognized the hurt feelings that my son's mother had in that moment. It was that day that my partner and I discussed what it means to “share a family”.
In our home we model empathy (to build and sustain relationships), creativity (to help identify and process emotions) and resiliency (to cope with challenging situations and life’s unexpectedness). We explored how to use empathy to understand the situation. We brainstormed about how to celebrate my role as a mother in our family while still honoring our son’s biological mom on this special day.
We sorted through MY anger iceberg and identified feelings of injustice, contradiction, rejection and frustration. It took a significant amount of humility and resilience to understand that giving up our time with our child on Mother’s Day didn’t mean conceding to the idea that I was not fulfilling a mother type role. Rather, it meant doing what a mother does: employs empathy to justify sacrifice. Peace and acceptance did not come immediately, but it did find me eventually. We also spoke about my journey to motherhood and how our beautiful family is built on love and respect for one another. We explored how to incorporate these principles into Mother’s Day going forward.
And so, every year, I celebrate Mother’s Day by showing appreciation for the mother's in my life by making attempts at being physically present and I am still ridiculously detailed when it comes to the flowers/gifts I pick out.
I honour my past and acknowledge how difficult Mother’s Day is for those who want to be mothers, mothers who have lost children, and mothers who can’t have children. I am empathetic to how this day can serve as a reminder for what isn’t and I try to focus on all the things that are.
I honor my role as a Stepmom by acknowledging all my fellow stepmoms who are selflessly helping to raise children in what is too often a contemptuous situation and I say "THANK YOU" from all the biological Mothers who aren’t able to say it themselves.
Rituals and Celebrations
Finally, I celebrate the love that is the foundation of our family. Every year we turn Mother’s Day into the Anniversary of our family. My partner and I get dressed up. We have a cold beer on a patio and reminisce about our first date. We hold hands and take romantic walks down memory lane. He thanks me, both in words and in actions, for the person that I am to our child, the co-parent that I am to him, and the resiliency that I have when it comes to the attempts I make at giving our child fluidity between his two homes. I thank him for being an attentive partner, an amazing dad, a slow-to-anger human with the patience of a saint (and a handsome man who makes it easy to want to come home too). We make future plans together for just the two of us, and meet each other’s bids for connection. It is a day filled with love and appreciation, which for me is what Mother’s Day is all about.
We decided to move dates around so that our son's mother is always able to celebrate Mother's Day with the one person who made her a mother. It’s a small way that we can show appreciation for her role and I am at peace with this decision. It’s my way of sharing our family using my guiding principles of empathy, creativity and resilience.
And as for our son...
I get shown appreciation throughout the year with hugs, kisses, thank you's and yellow flowers for absolutely no reason at all...
