Written and posted on Facebook on Mother’s Day 2023, while sipping a cardamom latte and feeling emotional stirrings often unnamed and regularly unaccounted for. Reposted on the Rachel Writing Around Blog on Mother’s Day, May 12, 2024 after an absolutely lovely day with sun and food and family and friends, but not without tears.

When complicated emotions are attached to ritual and tradition, what society doesn’t see is the quiet hurt attached to the calendar. Anniversaries cherished by one trigger trauma for another. Days full of family and laughter for some create voided echoes of pain for others.

Even more complicated are the days that stir the mix together. So amid family and friends and joy and blessing and fondness are hidden tears of guilt and resentment and sorrow. And it’s there— in the eye of misery surrounded by celebration—that the deepest, unlabeled, unaccounted for emotions present themselves.

I wonder how many days of celebration people haven’t felt celebrated or how many days of accomplishment were steeped in unexpected letdown.

For several years after my mom passed away, any BIG day for me felt like another event she wasn’t able to see. In 2004 I pulled up to my sister’s house, dressed to impress, ready for my credentials, hood and robe strewn neatly in the back seat and instead of heading in to greet my family before my hooding ceremony, I sobbed in the car. My Outback was suddenly a sanctuary, allowing my tears to pour and holding the emotions I had no idea needed to explode. I didn’t know I was sad until I was. I didn’t know I would feel trauma until I did. I didn’t know how much I could miss a person until she was gone. Gone so fast and so unexpectedly and so unfairly that it left us standing in the dust of disbelief. I just wanted her there with me.

The memory storage, ahem, baggage, held in our cells must be either the most intelligent of designs or a real shitshow because it sure does keep things locked and keyed until it gets a whiff of nostalgia.

My first Mother’s Day without my mom stung. I wasn’t a mom yet so it served only to remind me of my own whom I missed. And to say that I “missed” her actually feels like the most understated nomenclature imaginable because I didn’t just “have lack of her,” as the French translation—Tu me manques—would suggest. I mean, I felt unbearably alone and confused and underprepared to live a life without her. My mom was kinda nutty. I’m not glamorizing her crazy, but she was mine. And for every bit of crazy she had, came double the amount of love and service and genuine commitment to her people. Never was anyone so loyal.

So of course, that first Mother’s Day in 2003, feeling motherless, I sat at church with my husband of only nine months and listened to the talks of mothers and fondly remembered mine. Then the little primary kids got up and they had painted cardboard props that made their heads look like a flower garden, with holes cut out of the middles for their faces and they started singing the Mother’s Day song and I don’t even remember what song it was because I actually had spontaneous tears combustion. I honestly didn’t even see it coming and it was too late to go hide. They were so cute and they really loved their mamas and I really loved mine and they gave me a chance to feel it all the way to my bones in their little song. Never underestimate the power of a primary song to make you feel everything.

And just like that—the emotions were, forever more, mixed. Jumbled. Happiness and sadness back to back. Celebrations and let down. Love and kindness with guilt and sorrow. If you’ve experienced loss, you know this mix. It’s the birthday of the baby you didn’t get to meet on the same day as your four year old’s first tee ball game. It’s congratulating a new bride and groom a month after finalizing your divorce. It’s realizing that the only way to like your children is to have them leave you alone for a while.

And in this jumble comes a new level of empathy. It builds compassion. It fuels our humanity. It makes us the lowest and highest versions of ourselves.

Today, I celebrate the mix. The messy jumble. The fears of being the parts of your own mother that scarred you. The memories of love and devotion. The ability to forgive. The joy and the sadness. The brunch and flowers after bathroom tears.

Whether today is full of love or full of sorrow, and especially if it’s a jumbled day with complicated feelings, it’s your day to have and process and use the way you need to. Treasure it or get through it, remember or forget, celebrate or grieve. Mamas, it’s your day and whatever that looks like is just the right mix today.