Happy Mother’s Day!

The words sting every time I hear it. I can’t escape those words this week. I stand in front of the card section and pause. I’m there to buy one for my mother in law. My husband is slammed at work, so the task falls to me. She’s a lovely, wondrous lady. Someone who completely embraced me as her own. And I adore her. Cherise her. She’s mine but not in the same familiar way that she is his.

So it feels like the cruelest of jokes. To be standing there in the card section, as a motherless daughter searching for a Mother’s Day card.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. I think of my cousins and close family friends both of who lost their mothers in the past year. I know how hard the first one is.

They and you are written in my heart. We have a shared experience of losing a wonderful lady before we were ready for it to happen. But then again, are we ever really ready? It never gets better, it just gets different. Bad days fade into more good ones. Life keeps moving.

But for me, there is another side of all of this. The joy I get to experience because I am a mother to a child still on this earth. I will celebrate Mother’s Day as I do everyday- being a mother.

My expectations and reality of motherhood do not always live on the same happy rainbow. But at the end of the day, Malone is here. And he is mine.

I’m lucky that way.

I’ve read your blog. I’ve cried with you through your infertility struggles. I’ve held your hand as we talked about your miscarriage. I’ve hugged you tight as we stood sobbing together in front of your child’s casket.

I wish you were in a different place today. A space that was full of happier things and at a time when the world seemed okay.

I can’t say that I know what you’re going through as a childless person on Mother’s Day.

I see you. I know your heart. And I know it hurts today.

And I want you to know that whatever it is you are feeling, it is valid and okay.