Navigating Mother's Day as a childless, motherless woman

If Mother's Day pushes your buttons, you are not alone

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

It’s that time of year again - the time of year that has the power to send me spiralling down into a sorry state of mourning and moping, comparing and despairing, and feeling less than, inadequate and incomplete.

And it’s just one day: Mother’s Day (this Sunday in the UK and May 11th in the US).

It’s a time of year when I’m acutely aware of my status as a childless, motherless, adult orphan; when I’m acutely aware that the parents who came before me have now gone and the children who might have come after me aren’t there and won’t arrive.

It’s a time of year when I can feel like a puppet without any strings - detached, disconnected, suspended in the ether, nothing above and nothing below.

It’s a time of year when I can feel like my life and the people in it aren’t enough.

It’s a time of year when I can make the mistake of comparing my insides with other people’s outsides - when I can look around at the bouquets of flowers, the family lunches and the multiple generations gathered on picnic blankets and think that I’m the odd one out, that I’ve missed out, that I don’t belong.

It’s a time of year that stirs up feelings that go all the way back to my childhood - a sense that I’m different, faulty, that there’s something wrong with me and that everyone else is having a much better experience of this thing called life, and that if I could just find a way to get what you’ve got, to have your family, I’d be happier.

This isn’t my first Mother’s Day as a childless, motherless woman.

It isn’t my first rodeo.

I’ve always been childless (because of my childhood, as you can read here) and Mum died four years ago (as I shared in this post written a few weeks after she passed away).

Thankfully, the passage of time, the crying of tears and the processing of deep childhood wounds have lessened my grief and I’m not as daunted by Mother’s Day as I was in the first year post-Mum.

But as the tulips bloom, the shops display their pink cards and friends and strangers prepare to celebrate the woman who brought them into the world, I can’t help but have some feelings.

I can sense those feelings, hovering beneath the surface, and I can sense my desire to avoid them, numb them or distract from them, rather than go there.

Fortunately, I have 20+ years of healing and growth in the bag and I know that I have to feel it to heal it, that numbing out on busyness, TV, food or anything else won’t work.

I know that the best gift I can give myself is presence - to be present to my feelings and connected to my pain so that I can process it, move through it and go beyond.

Taking care of ourselves

Another gift I can give myself is forethought.

Planning ahead isn’t my strongest point - I’m a midlife woman with ADHD, as I wrote in this post. But this year, I’m not going to be blindsided by Mother’s Day. I’m going to identify my needs, meet my needs and take care of myself, and I encourage you to do the same.

I’ve been thinking in advance about where I want to be on Sunday and with whom.

I know I want to be doing something that celebrates my freedom, something that I’d struggle to do if I was looking after small kids or caring for an elderly parent, something outdoors, in the fresh air, involving movement and exercise.

And I know I want to be with my husband and/or with other people I trust, feel safe around and who understand - perhaps people whose lives haven’t gone quite to plan either.

I also want to myself the gift of connection.

Let me explain ...

Because I grew up in an alcoholic, dysfunctional home, I am prone to feeling wary of other people and to feeling different from my fellow humans.

The result of this is isolation.

And the antidote to this is connection.

It’s about finding ways to see beyond any surface differences and to connect with people on a deeper level - on that level where grief, loss, pain, separateness, low self-worth and anxiety hang out.

Those seemingly happily families that I’m looking at from afar? We have more in common than it seems on first glance. We’re all human. Life, death, highs, lows, successes and challenges happen to all of us.

Pain. Suffering. Loss. Nobody is immune.

I can also find comfort by seeking out my tribe and remembering that I am not alone, acknowledging that there are millions of childless and motherless women all over the world, some of whom are reading this post. Hello! Please say Hi in the comments if you’re here.

And finally, I can remember that my greatest mission in life, and perhaps my biggest challenge, is to like who I am and to want what I have (rather than covet what I don’t) and to make the most of this one precious life.

That’s what I intend to do on Mother’s Day, to the best of my ability.

I send you strength and courage to do the same.

Resources & Workshops

I offer 1:1 and group coaching and host online workshops for women on a range of topics from finding healthy love, to stopping emotional overeating to overcoming people-pleasing. Explore my coaching here and my Spring workshops here.