The Dreaded Mother's Day

Every year, I dread Mother's Day.

Every year, it's hard, but the level of hard comes in waves. 

The first few years after estranging from my adoptive mom were especially hard. The first year after I learned how my birth mom/first mom died was extremely hard. But, every single year, I feel the ache of motherlessness or mother loss. 

I told my therapist this last Thursday, as the big day was looming. I told her that it's hard for me to even think about without feeling a raw ache, a yawning chasm of need for a mother I never had. 

So of course we dug into that feeling. I told her it was an imperfect (and frankly ableist) analogy, but the best way I can describe the feeling is like the loss of a limb, like I lost a part of myself at birth that I'll never ever get back and I ache for it. Though I fully acknowledge that I don't as yet know what losing a limb feels like and maybe if I experience that one day, I'll maybe tell you how unalike these experiences are, but it's the closest language I have right now. 

And under that is sadness and anger and frustration and jealousy and a sense of injustice that I didn't get my mother, that I never knew her and will never know her. 

I told her that I feel stuck in my grief of it, that it's just so constantly and consistently raw and never abates, this never ending sadness and craving for her. So then we talked about grief, about how the end result of truly grieving is acceptance and of course I haven't accepted the loss and I thought that how can I accept the loss when it's barely validated, barely acknowledged, how when I tell someone I'm adopted, they say, "How wonderful! How beautiful! How lucky!" 

But it doesn't feel wonderful or beautiful. I don't feel lucky. I want to tell people that my mom died (which technically she did) so that I can get the response I want, that I need, that I fucking deserve. When they say, "What are your plans for mother's day," instead of saying, Actually I was adopted by an abusive woman who I estranged from 15 years ago, and while it was the best decision for me, it was really hard, and when I went looking for my birth mom, I found she'd died decades prior and that's been painful and so really I'm motherless and I don't celebrate," I'd say, "My mom died." And then they'd say, "Oh I'm so sorry! That must be hard!" And I'd say, "Thank you. It is." 

Because losing your mother is really fucking hard. 

But I don't get that narrative, so how I can accept a loss that no one acknowledges? 

Then my therapist blew my motherfucking mind and suggested I use Mother's Day to honor my first mother. She suggested that maybe I can't get to the acceptance piece because I've never been allowed to truly think of my birth mom as my Mother, as the person she was and should have been, that I never got to honor her and thus how can I truly grieve her?  And I sat with it because holy shit and I told her I needed to really consider that but I'm not resistant to it and she totally thought I would be! But the thing is that it's fucking weird to grieve someone you've never met, but I need that grief and I think the needing of it, the delayed grief of it all has really kept me stuck in it. 

And I think that first delayed grief has really given me an unhealthy relationship with grief in general. I've had lots of losses in my life but I don't think I've ever properly grieved any of them, properly felt the loss and the sadness. When death has crossed paths with me, which it has many times, I always think, Everyone leaves. Everyone. And I move right on and keep surviving. I know this is the abandonment trauma, but it's absolutely also the lesson I learned early on that if the first and biggest loss I ever experienced wasn't due any grief or sadness, then no losses are. I fear the loss greatly. Abandonment is my greatest fear, but when it happens, it feels like confirmation that it was always coming and that I was right and I can't stop to feel it. 

It's also led to a feeling of disconnectedness from the earth and people around me. I've often felt like I didn't belong on the planet and wasn't quite real as a person. I felt like a changeling, maybe switched with a real human baby, left on the beach by the mermaids. 

I need to back up for a second and tell you about my coast trip this past spring. I spent about a week at the ocean and, every single day, I went up to the ocean's edge and grounded my feet in the sand, and pushed my fingertips to the sky, and felt the energy flow through me into the sand and water and imagined my roots pushing deep into the earth and I listened to the wind and the waves and I communed with the earth and the ocean. And every day, I listened and let her message flow into my mind as I flowed my energy back into the earth. And every day, she told me something new. 

She said to me:

You're found. 

You're home. 

You belong.

You are apart of me. 

You were never lost. 

You were always here. 

You are here.

You will always be here. 

And I cried and I accepted that message and my healing finally began. Obviously it was just a first step, but it was a powerful one and one I want to continue hearing. 

Which brings me back to Mother's Day. I thought I'd try something similar yesterday, that I would try to honor my mother as the person she was, not just the woman who birthed me and then gave me away and then died. I bought some flowers and I said some words, but it wasn't as successful as I'd hoped. I felt clunky and awkward and it didn't feel quite right. But I think the method I chose wasn't right for this thing, for her even. So I'm going to give it some more thought, more effort, more time. It doesn't have to be on that day even, I think, but I want to do this. I want to make efforts to give her that space she deserves and that I need from her. 

We'll see how it goes. She may have never been there for me, but I'm going to demand what I need from her now. And even though it will really be me giving it to myself, Little Me won't know the difference and that's who really needs to feel all of this. 

Little Me, Mother's Day 1982 or 83