Despite all the holidays in the year where I painfully miss my mother, Mother’s Day is one I can’t run away from. There’s no way to hide behind everyone’s cordial chatter about what your holiday plans are, what you’re looking forward to. You can chat all day long about other holidays and hide your pain, hide your dread, and no one will know. Mother’s Day nears and well… it can feel almost unbearable.

For the motherless, we feel the blow of every radio ad, every news insert, every gift special, every pop-up. The second Mother’s Day starts being advertised everywhere, I feel like I have to mentally prepare myself for it all. I have to remind myself of what it was like, and not hate every person that joyfully gets to buy gifts, or perhaps, awkwardly remembers that I won’t be celebrating mid-sentence. Then of course, others don’t bring it up at all, and I can’t help but imagine them thinking, she doesn’t have a mom.

Whether any of this is true or not, younger motherless daughters, especially those in the earlier periods of loss, feel this way constantly. We feel almost like it’s branded on us… or like Anna Quindlen wrote long ago in the Chicago Tribune, ‘Meet you in the lobby in ten minutes – I have long brown hair, am on the short side, have on a red coat, and my mother died when I as nineteen.’

While I write this, I’m aware that others are dressing to head to church, to grab brunch, to shop for gifts. Some, shocking as it feels, might even be spending the day with generations of moms. I am perpetually in awe and envy at families where three, sometimes four, generations of women are all still alive, all spending time together. It can make me feel sad, or unexpectedly triggered. I could simply glimpse a daughter, mother, and grandmother all taking a walk or having lunch and suddenly feel like I want to scream, “F*ck you! Why do you get to have that but I don’t?!!!”

The truth is… 364 days a year, the motherless do a damn good job of hiding what it’s like – what it’s like to not have a mom when this fact feels like it exists at the very core of who we are. The bond between a mother and daughter especially is so primal. Many of us feel that with our mother’s death, a part of us is dead too. It’s incredible how many of us, in our mother’s final moments, all share the same feeling – we wished we’d died right then and there at the same time.

So like every year, I daydream of what today might be like… If mom were here today, I’d make her a handmade card, just like I did as a little girl. I’d snuggle up to her on the couch – because it’s Mother’s Day and fully justified. Then we’d do something grown-up. How amazing that would be. It’s hard to grasp. People get to do that?

For the motherless, yes we share a common loss, but we also respond differently. There is no universality in how we grieve, how we grasp… Some of us will wake up and mourn. Others won’t at all. Some will feel numb to it. Some will feel like it still isn’t real. Some will wake up and realize it suddenly and painfully, perhaps for the very first time… ‘my god, my mom is gone.’

Some will want to cry, and some won’t. Some will want to reflect, and others won’t… it just hurts too much. Some of us will spend our day at a cemetery, some of us will go for a run, some of us will watch old home movies, and some of us just run away entirely. Some will spend time with their remaining family and be happy to share each other’s company. Some will hate every moment of it and just want to be alone. Some of us will celebrate our ‘other moms’ we’ve been blessed with – mothers-in-law, stepmoms, aunts, grandmothers… but it doesn’t compare. It’s never, nor will it ever be, even minutely close to the same.

Many of us though, will count down the minutes until the holiday is over. We’ll be freed from the countless awkward moments leading up to it where we’ve had to play a part. We’re through shopping for others’ moms and leaving empty-handed ourselves. We’re past wishing the moms we know a ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ to receive their polite but hesitant smirks in return. We’re past all the posts and pictures, and of course, all the radio ads that haunt our ears. We’ll be freed, at least for a little while, with how suddenly obvious, overbearing, overwhelming, and crushing motherlessness feels.

I write this to share how I feel today at least, to bear to light a common thread that so many of us share… If we could only sit in a room and say, ‘Don’t you just hate everyone sometimes?!,’ and all nod in agreement. I know that my feelings and my experience are mine, that they are different, that I am biased, and that this is no one’s fault. This awareness has certainly helped. It’s what’s allowed me to handle and accept things better with each passing day.

But the truth is, we the motherless feel every word. We hear every unintended blow. We’re the only ones that can get and appreciate how difficult this day is. For those who show concern or care, it’s appreciated, but to them, our story is just a story they can recall and retell. It’s near impossible to fully empathize. It’s impossible to fully understand how we really feel, how we receive so heavily everything that is said, what it’s like to not have a mother… especially when you should still have one.

Everything from small words to a grand statement weigh on us. I once had a boyfriend who was chatting with someone about my deceased mother. He was the nicest guy in the world. He very politely said to this person, “It’s awful, but you know, it is what it is…” It is what it is. Those words weighed on me for the rest of the entire day. I didn’t talk to him all night. He kept asking what was wrong, but I couldn’t tell him. He didn’t mean to be insensitive, but that’s all I could hear.

Then last week, I went to a graduation where the President made a huge testimony to the moms in the room. He kept going on about Mother’s Day and asked the students to thank their moms for all they’ve done for them. I thought of my sister sitting there in her cap and gown, clapping as he called for a round of applause for all the moms. Again, I know I’m biased, I know it was well-intentioned, but all I could think was, “How insensitive… What about those of us who don’t have moms?!” We feel everything. A person can simply say, “I called my mom today, and we feel it.”

I woke up this Mother’s Day morning and it was raining. I thought of my mother where she is now, beneath sopping wet grass, decayed, gone. Some of us will hide. Some of us will write. Some of us will reflect. Some will try to forget. Some are moms now themselves… and that helps, but it doesn’t take away the pain. For many of us, Mother’s Day will always feel among the worst holidays because it throws everything right in your face. There’s no getting around it. We feel so obviously like the odd one out. We feel like this all the time, but Mother’s Day is when it feels like we’re walking around, wearing this as a label on a name tag.

And for me… today is also my mother’s birthday. This combined date happens every few years. At the time of writing this, she would have been 59. I would have brought her double gifts, and a card, and a cake, and we would have had the best day ever. I will try to celebrate, I truly will. But I will also truly grieve.

This is what I know. Many of these are my sentiments, and many come from the countless others I know and that I’ve followed since joining this ‘club.’ There’s no easy solution for everyone else, in how to speak to us in a certain way, or the ‘right’ way. It will always be either awkward or sad, but maybe it too can be light. It’s okay to show support… because we do appreciate it. All of us are working daily on not blaming the world, not hating daughters who we overhear fighting with their moms, not hating the ungrateful, and on understanding our pain and loss is no one else’s fault.

Today, I do want to be alone, but in a good way. I enjoy the quiet and the reflection and remembering. At the same time, I’ll also write. Since my mother has passed, a devotion to keeping her spirit alive has kept a smile on my face, at least most of the time. I’ve been an advocate for Alzheimer’s. I’ve shared our story. I’ve helped lead a six-figure research-funding awareness walk. I’ve launched a nonprofit theatre company in her memory with amazing success… and I’m writing a book about this journey, caring for her and losing her.

To the motherless on Mother’s Day, my thread finds its way. We are all united. And however you choose to spend today, in ways that are positive or not, know you’re not alone. Among the masses, we are one invisibly banded group. Together, we are strong and our purpose remains to find the silver lining, to do more, to love more, to cherish the gifts, to relish in the memories, to find the good we can do in spite of the heartbreak we’ve been dealt, to carry on in strength with what we have seen and learned.

So today, take a moment to pause. Whatever you feel is valid and you should take the time to feel as you do. Then, if you can, try to feel something good. What would your mother want you to do? What might you have done with her? Go and do it with her, in spirit, anyway.

“What if you were sent major pain, not only to learn from it, but to help others too?” Mastin Kipp

NOTE: This post was originally written on May 14, 2017 – about 3 years after my mother passed. No matter when you are finding this post, I hope you find solidarity if it describes how you feel. What I can share is that the pain has gotten lighter. I am learning to celebrate the day. Grief is non-linear. It comes and goes. But it does lighten over time. Today, this day feels “happy.”

Also, I did publish my book if you’d like to buy a copy: The Language of Time