Mother's Day - The Tricky Icky Holiday

I know Mother’s Day is coming… I keep trying to ignore it… but every day that passes it’s one day closer.

I swore, yet again, I was NOT going to write anything on this topic.  I was going to try figure out a great way to WHOO HOOO on my mom and then lay low and try sneak through the weekend unnoticed. And yet, here I sit… mid week, with still no idea how to celebrate and show how ROCKSTAR my husband and my moms are, still no idea how to celebrate and honor our birth mom, and still trying to figure out a way to completely and quietly bypass the weekend all together without feeling any guilt.

Mother’s Day is tricky for me. I call Mother’s Day the Tricky Icky Holiday, I always have. It’s something I desperately want to embrace and celebrate, and it’s also something I want to completely forget and overlook.

So many things to celebrate and so many things to mourn on this socially over-hyped day of all things consumerism. Buy the flowers, buy the perfume, by the gifts, go out to eat, plaster it all over social media, shout it for all the world to hear how great moms are…

And moms ARE great, do NOT get me wrong!!! But, I happen to also know the word “mom” carries a whole lot of intricate baggage for each and every one of us, across a vast scope of realities.

I want to joyfully celebrate my husband and I’s awesome moms. I want to model to my kiddos how to fully celebrate their awesome grandmas. I want to honor and remember the moms and grandmas of my past, the ones that left a rich family legacy I get to continue to walk in. I want to celebrate our birth mom and the gift of life she gave us. I want to celebrate the two boys that call me mom. I also want to tearfully mourn the hole in my heart and at my kitchen table every day, for the mom I didn’t get to be to my little angel-babies. I want to be respectful of my single friends who are also caught in middle of wanting to celebrating their moms and grandmas while mourning their single-mom or not-yet mom status’s.

I honestly want to celebrate with all those celebrating, and I want to hug and mourn with all of the those dealing with the various scales and levels of deep aching.

Moms, grandmas, step-moms, single moms, birth moms, adoptive moms, angel baby moms, infertile moms, moms already gone, fur-baby moms, women who desperately want to be moms and aren’t. Phew

The million dollar question I seem to wrestle with every single year - how in Heaven’s name do you “celebrate” all of that well?!?

Honestly, I don’t think you do. I don’t think you can, it’s virtually impossible. I think you have to just pick and choose what you are going to fully allow yourself to feel and embrace on that day, and just go with it. Laugh. Cry. Live. Love. Mourn and be sad if you want to. Celebrate and go all out if you want to.

But whatever we do, I feel I just have to use my voice to try emphasize how important is that we just all be aware and mindful of others around us. Mindful of their reasons TO celebrate and be celebrated, and of their reasons to NOT celebrate or NOT get to be celebrated. I know that leaves a whole lot of tip-toeing around, but that’s ok.  I think it's ok we are all called to a small level of discomfort now-and-again.

Awareness and respect for one and all, is honestly one of the greatest gifts of celebration I can honestly think of. And this needs to be true for every day… every holiday… not just Mother’s Day… But especially on Mother’s Day… because it’s… well… just a tricky icky holiday…
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