Well it's over for another year.  I have had my pity party and my cry and now I will move on.  And even though every year I promise myself  I will not go on Facebook and see all my friends posts about how wonderful their Mother's Day was, I always do.  Like a moth to a flame.  My children each sent me a text.  And I suppose I should be grateful that they acknowledged me at all.  But it hurt anyway.

You hear it said all the time that Christmas is the most difficult holiday for a lot of people.  Perhaps.  But I think Mother's Day is even more painful.  It is fraught with all kinds of baggage, old and new.  Past hurts from our own mother's, and present hurts from our own offspring.  Everyone of us has a mother.  How can it not be an emotional time for most of us?

Mother's Day has always been difficult.  My mother did her best, but she was very young when she had me at only 18 years old.  My father left when I was 10 and my mother, not quite 30 was left to raise two children on her own, as well as pay off the mound of debt left by my father.  We lived in poverty.  We lived in shame as no one we knew had a single mother. And to top it all off she was struggling with mental illness.  Of course as a child you don't understand the pressures your parents face and the burdens they must bear.  All you know is your mother is tired, depressed, and too wrapped up in her own hurt to be available for you.  And then along comes that holiday to rub salt in the wounds.

My brother and I tried hard to make good Mother's Day's for her.  But when I was a teenager and young adult, I was bitter about my relationship with mother and angry with her most of the time.  Choosing a mother's day card was an ordeal.  At one time in my life I even considered making a line of greeting cards for dysfunctional families.   Maybe I should have.  "Mom, you were always there for me....passed out on the couch, but there just the same"...you know...stuff like that.  But I had to choose a Mother's Day card out of the array of sappy, sentimental cards that were available.  They just didn't fit.  So I went with the humourous ones, humour being my first defense when feelings become too intense.

Fast forward to present day and my own experiences of Mother's Day as a mother myself.  My children when they were young did things for me and it was always so sweet.  And we all tried to get together for brunch, or dinner.   But then they all went off and created lives of their own, with partners and children of their own.   I stopped arranging get togethers for Mother's Day because I figured they were old enough to do it.   Besides I am not comfortable saying"come and see me and tell me how great I am".   So I waited for the invitations for a get together, or a card, or a phone call.  Nothing.  Just the text messages.  And my heart broke.  Was that all I am worth to them?  Did I do such a bad job of raising them that they don't appreciate me? Are they spoiled and selfish?  And on Mother's Day evening, those are the thoughts that run through my head.

Then Monday comes and I regain my sanity and I realize that, just like me, my children are busy with their own lives.   They don't need me.  They don't think about me.  That's as it should be to a certain degree.  They have fled the nest.  And as I look back, I realize I never made a big deal about Mother's Day for my own mother, once I had a family of my own.  What goes around come around.  We never realize how much we hurt our parents until we become parents ourselves and our own children hurt us.

Anyway, I am glad it's over.