Permission NOT to Celebrate Mother’s Day.
For some, Mother’s Day is a wonderful holiday in the annual calendar.
If you feel happy celebrating this day and celebrating your mother or yourself as a mother – terrific! I’m so glad the holiday feels good to you.
But, like many of us, if you happened to grow up without a mother, or were raised by a mother who couldn’t or wouldn’t show up for you in the ways you really needed, or if you’ve lost your mom or are struggling with being a mom yourself, this day can be complex, challenging and possibly filled with all kinds of feelings not normally celebrated by Hallmark: longing, grief, despair, anger, etc.
If this is what the holiday brings up for you, I want you to know that you’re not alone in feeling challenged by this day.
I also want to tell you something you may not hear from anyone else:
You have permission not to enjoy this holiday. You have permission to feel exactly how you feel about Mother’s Day and to celebrate or not celebrate this day. You also have permission to do whatever you need and want to do on this day that actually supports you and your feelings versus what you think you should do.
So stow this digital permission slip away as I share more about three practical ways you can begin to mother yourself, no matter what your mothering was like growing up.
Three Ways to Mother Yourself.
No matter what your childhood mothering experience was like – whether you had a wonderful, functional relationship with your mom or if you grew up motherless or wounded by mothering in some way – part of our job as adults is to cultivate and grow our own internal mother in order to meet our needs and take care of ourselves as we move through life.
Three ways you can practically and immediately begin to do this for yourself include:
1) Creatively Meeting Your Own Needs.
Learning how to recognize and respect the clues your feelings contain is a wonderful first step in learning how to mother yourself.
But once you learn how to notice what it is your feelings are calling out for, your next step in the process of self-mothering is to begin to creatively meet these needs.
Sounds basic, doesn’t it?
Well, you’re right: This is basic. What does a mother do when her baby is hungry? She feeds her. What does she do when her child falls and scrapes their knee? She comforts her. What does a mother do when her child has had a super hard day and is feeling sad? She empathizes with her sadness and reassures her things will get better.
