This Mother's Day, mother yourself whole

Mother’s Day can bring sooo much pressure.

All those reminders to buy your mom flowers, candy or a day at a spa can wear down your heart.

Mother’s Day can be painful if you didn’t really feel a mother’s love or felt it so fiercely you miss your mom every day or struggle to find your mom in the woman you barely recognize in that haze of dementia.

Mother’s Day can be painful for women who wanted to be mothers, but never got the chance, for women who were adopted or placed a child up for adoption. Mother’s Day can hit you like a tsunami of sadness, especially if you had a complicated relationship with your mom or your own children.

My mom had 11 kids, so there wasn’t a lot of her to go around. She didn’t tuck us in at night with sweet lullabies and bedtime stories. Too many nights, we got the anger of dad’s belt ordering us to bed. I can joke about it now and call it “crowd control.” But back then, it hurt.

My mom did the best she could with what she had, so did her mom, and her mom and so on all the way back to Eve. The empty well fills up with more and more love to give as each generation moves past mere survival mode.

It took decades to make peace with the mother I got. Now I can see how much she did just to give us basic care, like three square meals and clean clothes. Imagine washing clothes for 13 people every week. Our basement looked like the “Appalachians of Laundry” with those mountains of dirty clothes.

Whether you still have your mom or not, try to see her through the eyes of gratitude. Make a list of what she did do right. The year my mom turned 75, I wrote down 75 things I loved about her – including doing all that laundry. It took days meandering through that minefield of childhood, but I came up with 75. There was so much magic tucked in all that mess.

If your mom is gone, may the best of her live on in you. The rest? Let it go. Release her with love.

I’m still learning to mother myself and fill in all the blanks she couldn’t. At the end of her life, I was able to love the woman inside the mom who couldn’t love me in all the ways I needed love. She couldn’t give something she didn’t have. She never had the mother’s love she craved, even though her mom did the best she could.

Maybe it’s time we all mothered ourselves whole. Maybe it’s time we become the parent we once craved, to love ourselves whole and to love our whole selves. Then, we can release our original parents from the burden.

Loving yourself whole means you commit to the care and feeding of you, body, mind, heart and soul. You give yourself healthy amounts of good food, exercise, rest and quiet time. You no longer say unkind words to yourself. You no longer look in the mirror to critique who you see.

You love the child inside that adult with the scars and extra pounds and age spots and wrinkles. You say kind words. I often place my hand over my heart, and remind myself, “Honey, you are doing the best you can, and your best is always enough.”

Pour some extra love on you every day. When you brush your hair, do it with love. When you brush your teeth, be gentle with those pearly whites. Massage those feet that carried you through the day. Thank every inch of you for keeping you alive today.

Use the good soap on you. Don’t save it for the guests who are afraid to use it anyway. Pull out the pearls, wear the new tie, serve yourself dinner on the fancy plates, even if it’s just Kraft Mac & Cheese.

Sing in the shower. Sing in the car. Make a playlist to match all the love you deserve. Scrap the sad songs. Just pure joy.

Read yourself a story. Tuck yourself in with an extra pillow. Take a long hot bubble bath with candlelight and music. Fall in love with you.

Whatever your mom did or didn’t do to mother you, you were – and still are – worthy of a mother’s love.

It’s never too late to give it to yourself.