The holiday that asks too much of everyone

While I am always tempted to rant about the politics of Mother’s Day—otherwise known as the holiday in which the capitalist patriarchy reduced what was meant to be a day of collective action for the benefit of mothers to a consumerist flowers-and-brunch-buying day (I couldn’t resist. See here or here for a more complete rant)—this year, I am thinking about a different set of reasons this holiday can be complicated so many of us.

My theme this year is “Receive,” and chances are, there were lots of things you needed or wanted as a kid and didn’t receive from your mother.

Maybe it was her attention and understanding; maybe you craved more play, silliness and joy; maybe it was her very presence that you didn’t get. Capitalist patriarchy likely had a big role in all these absences too, by the way.

Nevertheless, if you’re like me, you may have spent a lot of time talking to your therapist about the negative impact of all the things you didn’t get from your mom. In many ways, it’s easier to focus on lacks, losses, and the ways that we have been victimized.

And yet, no matter our relationships with them, we are inextricably bound to our birth mothers. Because, whether we like it or not, our mothers have given us the biggest thing we could have ever received: our very existence.

For us, these women traveled to the mysterious realm where human beings come from—that sacred place as old as time, beyond culture and consciousness—and opened their own bodies as portals.

Each Mother’s Day (or Mothers’ Day, as it was originally intended) we are asked to acknowledge how much we’ve received.

We are asked to hold both of these truths at once: Our mothers didn’t give us enough, and they gave us everything.

Such complicated truths can feel not so comfy to sit in. Making brunch reservations is so much simpler.

But maybe, this week, it’s worth letting ourselves acknowledge, and really receive, all that our mothers, and their mothers, and theirs, have given us.