When Mother's Day Feels Hard
How to cope with a day that's often filled with pressure, sadness, and performance.
If you’ve followed my work over the past 5ish years, you know I’ve been outspoken in my writing for The New York Times about how terribly our society treats mothers and my own ambivalence about motherhood.
This year is the first Mother’s Day in which I have an actual child I’m responsible for (technically, I guess an almost toddler? My son will be 1 in June).
And, Mother’s Day low key fills me with dread. Like I’m bracing for this weekend that is supposed to be something “special” and I feel a combination of performance anxiety, annoyance that there is an expectation to perform, and the nagging feeling I’m not doing it right now that I am a Mom.
This doesn’t feel unique to me though — most moms I know find Mother’s Day to be filled with either pressure, sadness, or performance. (Or, in some delightful cases, a combination of all three!)
Many of my patients say that for Mother’s Day, they just want to be alone. Nobody touching me or asking me for something. Let me just stare at the wall please! I’ve had many a conversation wherein a patient expresses guilt for wanting Mother’s Day to be an escape from her own family.
And, there are the shame filled conversations about how the day didn’t live up to the hype — when a patient compares what her family does for her to what a friend or a neighbor’s family does for them. From my vantage point as a perinatal psychiatrist, it does not seem that there is a whole lot of good or fun or joy being had by mother’s on Mother’s Day.
I recognize this is a generalization. There must be folks out there who are able to soak in some real goodness on Mother’s Day, right? (Please, if this is you, comment on this Substack!)