Honoring the Childless Women Who Feel Invisible Today
Mother’s Day is hard for a particular group of women — but it shouldn’t be
Well, here we go again. It’s my least favorite time of year. I absolutely hate May and all its fanfare around motherhood.
I recently received an interesting weekly newsletter from a certain publication that shall remain nameless — though if you are reading this, then you might have gotten it, too. It started out by sharing thoughts about being offered an opt-out for Mother’s Day marketing emails. The woman writing the newsletter — who noted she was a very happy mother and had a very happy relationship with her own mother — was compassionate about the opt-out, acknowledging that this day can be difficult for people, depending upon their perspectives. She even quoted a few other women, describing their complicated feelings about the holiday.
But the strange thing was that all of the women included were mothers of living children. One of them had lost one child, but all of them had children they were still raising.
I can’t figure out why it is so hard to remember the other people for whom this holiday might be difficult. There are a lot of different reasons why this day might be hard, and I won’t get into all of them. But right now, I want to highlight one…
