Mother is a verb

krwact · May 2013

I wrote this essay this morning and hadn't really intended to share it but seeing the Happy "First" Mother's Day post made me realize I'm far from the only person to be feeling this way. Sorry it's long.

Yesterday was Mother?s Day. I avoided celebrating the day for myself because, as it is for so many people, it?s a day fraught with many complicated emotions. Last year, I spent Mother?s Day experiencing the end of my first pregnancy. After struggling with the complicated emotions involved with infertility, I had just weeks before seen the first positive pregnancy test of my life. Though the beginning of that pregnancy was filled with myriad mixed emotions, terror being first among them, the end was nothing more than devastating. I told only a few about my loss though it still amazes me that my pain wasn?t marked as indelibly on my exterior as it was in my heart. As painful as it was to keep this experience mostly to myself, it had to be better than bearing the insensitive comments that always seem to accompany a pregnancy loss, ?At least it was early?, ?It?s nature?s way?, ?At least you know you can get pregnant?, comments said in well-intentioned ignorance of what was really lost ? hope.

This year is different. My Mother?s Day started very early in the morning as I woke (as I do every three hours these days) to nurse my newborn son. I was touched to receive a few cards from friends and family, filled with messages of congratulations on celebrating my first Mother?s Day. I was officially part of the club. As I honored the intention behind those messages, the words themselves hurt. This wasn?t my first Mother?s Day. As I sat with this hurt (this pain and I are old companions now), I started to realize just why those words cut so deeply. For me, the word Mother isn?t a noun. It?s not an identity you can assume in a single day through birth or adoption or one that?s restricted to the confines of gender or biology. Mother is a verb. To mother another creature is to anticipate and attend to their needs, to feel their pain as your own, to celebrate their victories and offer comfort whenever needed. It requires empathy and imagination and demands that one struggle with the balance of self-care and self-sacrifice. It is a series of actions, of choices. I have mothered for years. I have at times mothered friends, family, my spouse, my cats, occasionally even my own parents. No one, myself included, can point to a day on a calendar and tell me when I became a mother. I become a mother over and over again in a thousand ways every day because I choose to.

Today I celebrate all who mother, those with living children and those without. We are all worthy of recognition.

ProfessorPedals825 · May 2013

Thank you so much for sharing this. It definitely sums up the way a lot of us feel. You are not alone feeling this way. ((hugs))

Rachel Goldstein · May 2013

I'm so glad you shared this K. It's true beyond words. I wish I could have given you hugs yesterday while you dealt with your bittersweet feelings. As much as we want to never look back, it just doesn't work that way. We must in order to look forward. I love how you wrote this, it's beautiful.

Many hugs my friend.