What I Wish My Mother'd Told Me

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Mother's Day can be a sweet pickle. Some of us have mothers that were not always easy to celebrate. Some of us are stretched between honoring mothers, mothers-in-laws, grandmothers, and lastly, ourselves. We look for nurturing, we look for rest.

Some of us have no children of the human sort. But we do tend four-legged friends, birds on the wing, and greener cousins.

All of us have mothers. And all of us have the divine impulse to mother or to honor motherhood in some way. Tell me that seeing an otter nestling her baby on Instagram doesn't melt your heart.

Glimpsing the warmth of motherhood can bring both sweetness and ache, if those feelings are incongruent with the ones we've had for our moms. Or perhaps they're incongruent with the feelings we've had about ourselves as mothers. Parenting is no cake walk, for sure.

I used to feel uncomfortable in the card aisle on Mother's Day. I love my mom immensely. She was amazing. But no sentiment from Hallmark quite fit the experience I've had as a daughter.

Now I see things differently. I participate in motherhood in new ways.

I watch Crow as she gathers dried grass I've uprooted for her nest. A human mama plays "feet-only volleyball" with her 8 year old next door. I smile.

My cat raises his face to be stroked by my single finger. His tawny lips stretch into a grin as he remembers his mother's tongue from kittenhood.

Our bodies know mother love. We see it with our eyes. We hear it and raise our heads to look for the source.

We look ... for the Source. And we can find it within us.

We all have some aspect of the Mother in us. We mother each other, we mother ourselves. This is to be celebrated. Not once a year, but daily.

May our celebrations depend on what we do, rather than what others do. Let's avoid dwelling on how others don't show up. Let's be fed by our own nurturing, and the joy of nurturing one another in ways that we absolutely love.

May there be no end to this celebration.

How do you celebrate Mother's Day? And how are you re-Mothering yourself?