<Your Adjective Here> Mother's Day

Of all the Sundays of the year, I always find it hardest to write on Mother's Day.

Perhaps because Motherhood is so damn fraught with social pressure and expectations and disappointments and judgments.

Celebrating motherhood at a time thousands of women in the US are about to be forced to birth children is fucking hard.

Being a mother in a culture that expects mothers to be effortlessly superhuman is fucking hard.

Not being a mother in a culture obsessed with women bearing children is fucking hard.

Having a mother in a culture that asks mothers to be saints, and demonizes them when it turns out they're human, is fucking hard.

Losing a mother is fucking hard.

And, given all of the above, celebrating mothers - your mom, or yourself as mom - is also, often, fucking hard.

*

Oh, and here it is: the pressure.

I'm feeling the pressure to find the beauty in this mess of difficulty,

to whip up some kind of appreciative message to make us all feel seen and loved and buoyed today.

It's the same pressure, really, I feel so often as a woman,

a pressure that for me intensified with motherhood:

to keep my critical thinking to myself,

to take full responsibility for everyone's various feelings,

and to kiss it kiss it kiss it and make it better.

But that pressure is exactly what keeps us in this mess.

Here's the antidote:

We cannot please everyone, and that's okay.

We're sick of trying and so we won't, and that's okay.

People will be disappointed in our choices, and that's okay.

Today and every day, it's okay to feel what we feel,

and to ask for love and care the way WE want it.

We're human. We're human. We're human.

love,

Natalie