A Note for the Grieving on Mother’s Day

Holding Space for Grief, Rage, and Everything In Between

Mother’s Day is complicated.

For some, it’s sweet and celebratory. But for many of us, it carries a heavy weight. Grief, longing, anger, silence. A thousand different shapes of pain.

For me, Mother’s Day has never felt like a day to celebrate. I lost my mother twenty years ago. And not a single pastel card or brunch special could hold what she meant to me, or what her absence still feels like. I never needed a commercialized holiday to honor her. I carry her with me every day. In the way I speak gently to those in pain. In the way I make tea. In the way I remember.

But that’s only one layer.

There’s also the grief of what never came to be. I’ve had two miscarriages. I’ve walked the lonely path of infertility. I’ve met the end of my years to conceive, and I still work on coming to terms with the fact that I will never have children. For years, I met this day with full-body rage. Not just sadness, but anger. I hated how people would casually wish me a “Happy Mother’s Day” without knowing what they were saying. I hated the way the world forgot how many kinds of mothers and losses exist. I hated the way this day felt like it was never made for me.

For some, there are the relationships that never felt safe or loving. Some are estranged from their mothers. Some carry wounds from childhood that never had a place to heal. Some are mothers estranged from their own children, bearing a different kind of ache, unspoken, unseen. This day can feel like a pressure cooker for grief that doesn’t fit the mold.

So, this post is a sacred offering for all who are grieving:

For those who have lost their mothers.
For those who have lost children.
For those who wanted to be mothers and never got the chance.
For those who are estranged from their mothers or their children.
For those whose relationships with their mothers were painful, unsafe, or unresolved.
For those whose hearts feel too tender to name why this day hurts.
For those who feel numb, or angry, or nothing at all.

Grief evolves. It changes form. It may quiet with time, or it may knock the wind out of you years later. There is no finish line. No expiration date. And no right way to move through it.

So this is your permission:

To ignore the day entirely.
To weep in the bathroom.
To rage at the commercials.
To hold your belly and remember what could have been.
To skip the call or the card or the performative brunch.
To speak your mother’s name out loud, or to never speak it at all.
To do whatever your heart needs.

You are not broken. You are not alone. And you do not have to perform joy just because the calendar tells you to.

I see you. And I’m holding space for your grief.

Love today,
Heather