Mother's Day

Mother's Day gets me. Every single year it sneaks up on me, and then I'm standing in church watching the baby dedications and weeping. Some years more than others, but always without fail.

Mother's Day is complicated. I watch people. I'm a people watcher by nature, and I'm especially attuned to people on this wonderful, difficult day. I see the woman longing to be a mom, yearning to be the one up on stage holding a little one, wondering if her time will ever come. I know her by the tears running down her face as she turns away from the happy scene. I see the woman smiling down at her child while silently grieving the ones she never met. I know her by the wistful look in her eyes as she rests her hand on her belly unconsciously, a habit that never seems to go away.  I see the woman who looks sadly at the empty seat next to her--a woman who would give anything to hug her own mother one last time. I don't know her yet, but I will someday--a day I will never be ready for. I see you.

I have been one of you, am one of you still. I have written many times about my losses, but I don't know that I was ever quite able to truly convey the overwhelming, all-encompassing pain and grief I felt sometimes. Mother's Day was excruciating for me. Staring up at a whole line of rosy-cheeked babies and doting moms and dads was torture every year, and I found myself wanting to skip church on the day I probably needed it most.

How can you be thankful on a day your heart is so full of everything but gratitude? Questions and shame and anger and desperation, yes. But not gratitude. Not today. Flutters on a screen, heartbeats there and gone, hopes and dreams destroyed. I know. I see you.

I don't know if you will ever be up on that stage. I certainly doubted that I would ever be. I'm not one for platitudes; I have been on the receiving end of way too many. But I do want to say that you are not alone. Don't cry by yourself today in a bathroom stall; don't watch Netflix all day alone in the dark. Don't do the things that almost destroyed me years ago. Reach out to someone you love--or someone you barely know. Reach out to me. I'm here. I see you.