Mother’s Day Wishes

These are my Mother’s Day wishes for everyone out there in the world who needs them.

May you have less guilt today than usual. Less guilt about the job you feel you ought to be doing. Less guilt about feeling like you should have done more for the mother in your life (or the one who is no longer in your life). Less guilt about the planning you intended to do, but didn’t because other priorities took your attention. Less guilt about how you should do a better job teaching your children to honor their mother. Less of the accompanying guilt that you are selfish because you are the beneficiary of the reminders you give to your kids that they ought to be nice to their mother. That’s a recursive guilt, I hope you don’t have it in your life today or any other day.

May you have less stress. Particularly less stress that is associated with taking care of others. Even more particularly, may you not feel under pressure to have a wonderful day because if you don’t then everyone around you will feel like they failed and then you’ll all spiral into the recursive guilt which is unpleasant for everyone. I hope you can dismiss this stress, and any other pressure to present yourself as other than you are.

May you have fewer strings that tangle your choices. Most particularly strings that are attached to gifts. May all your gifts be stringless. May you be able to move through your obligations today without encountering any tangles. May you have a day where the needs of one person do not conflict with the needs of another, and where you are not called upon to be the arbiter of who is unhappy.

May you have a quiet moment of beauty. It can be a moment you created deliberately, or one you wander into. It may be as long as a soak in a hot tub, or as short as noticing a flower outside your window. I just hope you have a lovely thing in your day.

I hope all of these things for anyone who needs them, mothers, non-mothers, children, parents, grandparents, care-takers, and care receivers. And one last wish: May you extricate today from the weight of expectation and make it into the day you need it to be.