This year Mother’s Day just hits a little different

My entire world has changed in the last three years, and in those last 3 years one of the many traumas I have had to deal with is coming to terms that I will not have children of my own. And no, this is not the infertility that you have when you haven’t got pregnant in a year so your Dr. Puts you on clomid, this is my reproductive organs do not work in the way that allow me to have children so please don’t @ me with all your encouragement on this topic you most likey have no idea about, and yes I’m still salty, I have not fully figured out how to process this or accept it. I’m working on it, but clearly not there yet.

As a someone who has identified as a woman her entire life you just expect to have children. Its not a question of having children or not, it’s when. As young girls were primed and prepped to be mothers with our baby dolls our plastic kitchen units and our easy bake ovens, our whole life we are prepared to become mothers. So, Just as society had asked of me, I had been planning my life around my hypothetical children since I’ve been 12 or 13 years old. I was almost obsessed with having children of my own. Thank goodness when I was 12 years old my dad and my stepmom had twins so my teenage baby fever was pacified somewhat by the birth of my brother and sister . But my teenage life was turbulent and I moved back-and-forth between my mom and dad and also spent time staying with friends and living at other people’s houses so I got to experience a lot of different moms even in times I didn’t have my own.

Now as an adult, 32, divorced, single, celibate and primed with extensive medical documentation that I am not able to create life on my own, with my own body I feel more detached than ever from motherhood. To soothe my cravings for motherhood I now have 5 cats, a dog, a fish, at least 20 house plants, a greenhouse, outdoor plants, flower beds, I feed all the birds, the squirrels and other animals around my home. Because I don’t have my own child or lover to take care of I turned that care to my home, everything inside of it and everything that surrounds it.

Infertility aside, this is also the 1st year that I no longer have any grandmothers sharing this Earth with me. I’m grateful to have them as ancestors but today is a day that I would normally be with my mom and my grandmother. Now with the current state of things I’m self isolated in my home and don’t even get to be with my mom for the 1st year she doesn’t have her mom.

My dad got divorced in the same year I did (2018) so now I am estranged from his ex wife who got married to my dad when I was only 6 years old, which is another unique layer to the complexities of what I know to be motherhood, how toxic it can be and how easily it can disappear.

Today my family is also really in my thoughts. At the end of 2019 my family lost 3 women. Grandmothers, mothers, children, cousins, sisters etc. I witnessed children loose their mothers and mothers loose their children.

I also can’t help but to think of all the mothers around the world and especially in this country who are losing their babies to violence. Having to deal with grown men taking away these beautiful babies from these mothers, especially Wanda Cooper the mother of Ahmaud Arbery who was murdered in February by white supremacists/terrorists in a hate crime that recently received national attention.

And just to add a little bit more emotion into this Mother’s Day, this year happens it to fall the day before the anniversary of when I lost my 23 year old Kitty cheddar and also primes me up for a lot my anniversary trauma that happens in June.

My heart is heavy today, and this post is more of a therapeutic release for me, so thank you for sharing this space with me. If you are a mom hold your babies tight. If you are aching from an empty womb and/or the loss of a child love yourself just a little bit more today because it will be OK.