Mother's Day Series Part 5: Mother's Day for people with complicated mothers.

Mother’s Day is beautiful for many people. For others, it is complicated,because not everybody grew up inside soft love.

Some people grew up around constant and unexplained anger, shouting, and fear. They grew up around mothers who were overwhelmed, wounded, exhausted, absent, unpredictable, or living with pain that they passed down to their children.

I once spoke to someone who told me they feared going home as a child, not because home lacked food, but because it lacked peace. Their mother beat them really harshly. Small mistakes were frightening, and the atmosphere was tense all the time. They even had to tiptoe as they walked down corridors to the bathroom or bedroom. 

This is confusing because difficult mothers are still mothers. They are still mothers who sometimes, sacrificed enormously, sometimes suffered, and sometimes they loved sincerely but expressed it badly. That complexity is difficult to discuss publicly because our society prefers success stories.

Some mothers were raising children while battling disappointments nobody ever asked about, like financial pressure, marriage problems, loneliness, depression, unhealed trauma from their own childhoods.

None of this excuses harm, but it explains some of the heaviness in many mothers and homes.

Mother’s Day can therefore feel different for some people. While one person posts flowers, there is another who will avoid the internet for the entire day.

Some people are healing, some are forgiving, some are grieving mothers who were physically present but emotionally unreachable, while some are trying to love their mothers from a safe distance.

All those feelings are real.

From where my feet are, motherhood is sacred, but mothers are also human beings. Human beings sometimes break while raising other human beings.