A day-long stab to the heart: Mother’s Day

In May, when Canadian shops are bursting with cards and flowers to celebrate Motherhood, I hold space for those who feel pain because of Mother’s Day.

Not all mothers are worthy of praise, yet many wonderful moms just don’t get the love they deserve. Mother’s Day is salt poured in an open wound for women who mourn their stillborn babes, for those whose kids are missing or dead, and for those whose children reject or forget about them.

Mother’s Day has always been complicated for me as an adoptee, and that’s helped me to see how it’s a tough day for many, in ways you might never imagine.

(Author’s Note: all names in this article are pseudonyms, to protect privacy. Also, photo credits from top down, to Sharon McCutcheon, Alec Douglas and Aaron Burden, on Unsplash.)

My friend Cheryl’s in the end zone of a bad divorce, just snipping off the last hanging threads. One of the ugliest parts of the whole scenario is that her treasured role as a step mom came to a jarring halt when her ex decided to cut her off from his kids.

“My own mom never acknowledged me as a parent when my husband and I were together and I was stepmother to his children,” she explained. “This year, I don’t have a spouse, I haven’t had contact with the kids since we split, and I’ve lost Michael, whom I truly considered MY son.”

Beautiful, funny, sensitive and intelligent Michael, who suffered with depression, recently took his own life. Cheryl has been excluded from sharing in the family’s grief and was not permitted to attend the young man’s memorial.

“The pain of Mother’s Day this year is almost unbearable,” she said, “and I will be suffering silently as I celebrate my own Mom and other family members. It is a truly unique and desperate pain to have lost two identities — a spouse and step mother. It’s a strange thing to feel like I am still a mother and yet, I’m not. I feel like I am grieving my son as a mother, though that itself is fraught with complicated emotions as well. Anyway. All this to say — it’s a heartbreaking day for me this year, truly to the full meaning of the word.”

My friend Laura, whom I’ve know for at least 20 years, shared similar internal struggles to my own on Mother’s Day, but neither of us knew it until recently. Somehow, the topic of adoption never came up between us until in the midst of a conversation one of us mentioned it, the other one said ‘What!? Me too!’ and all at once the feelings came tumbling out from both of us, overlapping at times in their urgency. There’s no point in talking about some of this stuff with people who aren’t adopted and when you find someone who is, it can gush out in torrents.

“I think,” Laura pondered, “that deep inside at some level, Mother’s Day invokes a sense of wistfulness for adoptees. As a youngster, I always wondered and fantasized about my ‘real mother.’

“After meeting her and learning of her struggles and those of her mother, and likely her mother before her, I am grateful to have escaped that cycle. I have reframed how I think about Mother’s Day over the years. How lucky am I to have these three boys who became lovely men in a very stable supportive home and family. How lucky am I to have a granddaughter who has a caring loving father who knows the value of creating a supportive environment for his children.”

When Laura found her mother, dissolving the fantasy woman in her head, their connection was largely painful, frustrating, and disappointing. But she was strong enough to recognize the gifts that also arose from it.

There’s one last story to share with you here; perhaps the most tragic and intense of all. I met Shannon through work. She views Mother’s Day through a lens so scarred, it’s a miracle she can see through it at all.

“Mother’s Day has me thinking about three very different men that I have loved at different times in my life,” she told me. “Nineteen-year-old me fell in love with the deacon’s son. We met at a young adult’s retreat in Ontario, and he pursued me relentlessly. He also beat me relentlessly. Three pregnancies. I had three pregnancies with this boy, and I also had three abortions. He impregnated me intentionally, but also made me terminate the pregnancies. I cried for the first one and was numb by the third.”

Eight years later, Shannon ended up married to the man who had been her first boyfriend; with whom she shared her first kiss.

“He was my first a lot of things,” she said. “But we fought constantly and then we tried to have a baby to ‘fix things.’ My first pregnancy in the marriage was twins. I lost them, one at a time. I became pregnant a second time, as the controversy in my marriage escalated. It had been a final attempt to save the union, but four weeks into the pregnancy I smelled the blood trickling down my legs.”

Today, Shannon’s in a happy and healthy relationship — the love of her life — with a man who has proven he will do anything for her. He’s the ideal partner and would make a wonderful father, she says … but he’s sterile.

“I’m jealous, sad, angry, and working on forgiving myself. Every Mother’s Day.”

These are true stories from real people. We have no way of knowing what others are going through, so please remember to be kind. Always be kind.

I’d like to put this story to bed with a wee prayer, which seems to fit so well:

To the Moms Who Are

To the Moms who are struggling, to those filled with incandescent joy.
To the Moms who are remembering children who have died, and pregnancies that miscarried.
To the Moms who decided other parents were the best choice for their babies, to the Moms who adopted those kids and loved them fierce.
To those experiencing frustration or desperation in infertility.
To those who knew they never wanted kids, and the ways they have contributed to our shared world.
To those who mothered colleagues, mentees, neighborhood kids, and anyone who needed it.
To those remembering Moms no longer with us.
To those moving forward from Moms who did not show love, or hurt those they should have cared for.
Today is a day to honor the unyielding love and care for others we call ‘Motherhood,’ wherever we have found it and in whatever ways we have found to cultivate it within ourselves.

- Hannah Kardon, Pastor at Elston Avenue United Methodist Church