Mother’s Day: Divorced Edition
When we are married, the Mother’s Day of our imagination will sometimes fail to stack up to the Mother’s Day of our reality. We want a break. We want to be affirmed. We want to be noticed. We want to be relieved of the mantle.
What we sometimes get instead is a nagging sense of one of the following:
This isn’t enough.
My spouse doesn’t know me or what I want.
My spouse completely blew this opportunity to notice me.
My kids were a mess.
It can shine a bright and uncomfortable spotlight on the spaces of disconnection and longing.
After divorce, Mother’s Day takes a huge shift as the person assumed to be in charge of rallying your children toward an expression of gratitude for you (usually your spouse) is no longer there to take the lead. Most mothers I talk to in this situation expect their former partners to still perform some measure of the same activities for Mother’s Day. They tell me that this is what a good parent does, s/he teaches their children how to love their mother.
I couldn’t agree more that in the best of situations our children learn from both parents how to honor, celebrate, respect, forgive, and love their other parent. What happens in reality is that often one parent is willing and able to carry out this task, but the other parent is not.
In divorce, our former partners will often drop the ball on Mother’s Day.
As you move through the upheaval of divorce and reimagining a newly shaped future, I would encourage you this year to not add to your load by setting up expectations for Mother’s Day that rely on the actions of your former partner.
So what do you do instead?
Start by casting your Mother’s Day in a new light. Where it may previously have been focused on receiving - gifts, cards, free time - your heart will be best served by focusing on giving to yourself. What does that mean practically? It means you drill down on a few questions:
What matters most to me about Mother’s Day? What is it really about for me?
How can I best honor what I bring to my mothering endeavors?
And, most importantly, how can I invite my children to join in in ways that they too can be and feel successful?
There was a time when Mother’s Day was more of a disappointment to me than a blessing. I expected the day to be conflict free and everyone should be on their best behavior. What I figured out over time, though, was it is too hard for any of us to be at our best all day long. I was setting all of us up for failure.
It was time for a Mother’s Day reboot.
When I think about Mother’s Day now as a mom in a two-address family, the thing that matters most to me is a carved out, short, intentional time with my kids to talk about and enjoy our mother-child relationship. I tell them the stories of their births and how they made me a mother. I tell them what I have learned in the gift of mothering them. They might hug me or give me a gift. When they were smaller, the school would usually make sure they had a gift for me. As they got older, I would remind them that Mother’s Day was coming and ask if they wanted any help putting a card or gift together. I didn’t do that so that they would feel pressure. I did that so that they would feel successful. We all want to feel successful on Mother’s Day.
In my case, I no longer celebrate Mother’s Day; I choose to celebrate Mother’s Hour. I love that the first waking hour of my Mother’s Day is typically spent hanging out with my kids and noticing Mother’s Day. It’s when we are all at our best. We capture the moment, and then we get on with our typical day. I reflect with myself later about what it is I am proud of as a mom and what growth I have experienced in the past year. But after Mother’s Hour, I move on to doing the actual work of being a great mother in our family.
Best to you all this Mother’s Day as you make the shift into creating a Mother’s Day that fits your family shape and let’s you best honor the limits and blessings of each of your family members!
