Mother’s Day: The Most Important Holiday
Mother’s Day is the most important holiday on the calendar. Mothers are the bedrock of civilization, and the force shaping its future. For this reason, I at this moment call for Mother’s Day to be celebrated 365 per year.
Mothers do so much for children and society. They are critical to the mental health of children, to the social structure of families, to the continuation of a legacy of empathy, sensitivity, and humanity. They bring us into this world with great pains to themselves and their bodies. They give selflessly often without asking for gratitude or recognition from others. They are the silent heroes of many of our stories, and yet we pay them little regard unless it is the one day per year that we buy them flowers and a greeting card. Our eyes are closed 364 days of the year and only open on one special day.
Mothers are so essential in shaping fundamental attributes of children that it is often taken for granted how essential their influence is.
As John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory described, attachment to one’s mother is the scaffolding that shapes the expectations of how we relate to others. If our mothers are emotionally and physically present enough, soothe our distress and meet our needs then we see the world of relationships as a safe and loving place where our needs will be met in the future.
That is to say — mothers are the ones who teach us how to love. And It is in the very beginning, in the first few years after childbirth, that we owe mother’s the greatest debt of gratitude for this gift. Often sleepless and depleted physically and emotionally, mothers endlessly soothe their baby’s distress from moment to moment, protect their babies from harm, regulate their babies’ emotions and provide sustenance, nurturance, and security. They have often made great sacrifices to their careers, to their self-care, to their self-interest to have us and to care for us.
It is in these first three years that we bond with and attach to our mothers who serve as an example of how we love and can be loved in the future.
Our first experience of intimacy is a physical or bodily experience. It is through the skin to skin and eye contact and the soothing voice of our mother that we feel connected to ourselves and another human being. It is this early experience of bonding that makes us seek our mother’s eyes, her touch, and her voice and gives us a deep sense of emotional security when we are in her presence. And sustains us eventually when she is not physically with us.
In fact, mothers teach us how to regulate not only our love but all of our emotions. When our mothers reflect and tend to our feelings whether sad or happy, fearful or joyful, angry or excited we see in their eyes the first proof of our existence and our personhood. It is a mother’s ability to mirror and be empathic toward her child’s feelings rather than dismiss or distract them that is the foundation of that child’s ego or sense of self. It is through the modeling of that empathy and understanding from our mothers that we see ourselves as valuable, interesting and loveable. As a result of this interest in our emotions that we can seek healthy and reciprocal partners as adults who can connect with us on a deeply emotional level and love us the way, we love ourselves. This is the true foundation of intimacy.
We owe our mothers so much for the work they do in shaping who we are. It is evident not only in their selflessness to tend to our emotional needs often at the expense of their own, but It is also in their sacrifice in letting us go when the time comes that helps us to become loving and emotionally balanced individuals. It is painful for mothers to relinquish the tenderness of the early intimacy and yet when the time for separation comes they support us to practice our newfound independence. Our mothers encourage us to be autonomous so we can venture out into the world and find love someday. Without this dance of attachment and separation, intimacy and independence we would never be able to leave the sweet, idealized merger with our mothers.
Without mothers’ sacrifice, where would we be?
Mothers are the cornerstone of emotional security. Whether we came from their bodies or were adopted, whether they are grandmothers who we call mother, or whether they work or stay at home, the role of mother or primary caregiver is the most critical role in our society and one which we quietly ignore most of the year. A mother’s impact on our lives is so essential that we fail to recognize it. We owe our mothers so much, yet they ask for so little.
Mothers everywhere we recognize your gifts, your love which gave us as adults the ability to love and the yearning to be intimate. May we pass on your lessons and love to the next generation so they too can find a love of their own; so they too can be wonderful and selfless mothers and fathers who teach their children to feel secure, to feel loveable, to have empathy and above all to love.
Erica Komisar, LCSW is a psychoanalyst, parent guidance expert and author of Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters published by Tarcher Perigee.
