A Prayer for Mother's Day
For about the past ten years I have written a prayer for mother’s day. It's usually pretty much the same every year, but I write it new anyway. Over the years that I have written this prayer, my own mother with whom I had a painfully complicated relationship with, got sick and died. I have had friends who were moms die from random illness and from suicide. I have become a mother again, which lost me some of my dearest friends who long to be mothers themselves.
Motherhood is not simple. It gets tangled up in sexuality and economic privilege. Since last mothers day Roe v Wade was overturned forcing who knows how many people to become mothers nonconsensually. Hating on moms is one of our nastiest pastimes, and it is unlikely to let up. Please be gentle with yourselves and with each other today.
Here is my payer for us all this year:
I am praying today for all the mamas, and all the children of mamas.
I am praying for all of you who always wanted to be mamas and aren't.
I am praying for all the grown-ass women who have always known that they never wanted to be mamas. You know love just fine.
I am praying for all of you who are becoming mamas against your will. This is so hard and I am so sorry.
I am praying today for everyone whose relationship with your mama is so complicated that this day's platitudes physically hurt. There is nothing wrong with you if your mama couldn't or didn't love you.
I am praying Thank You! for all the aunties and the neighbors, the family friends and the teachers who showed up when you were the love that was needed. Some of us wouldn't have made it without you.
I am praying today for all you femme partners of bio-mamas, for the trans-mamas, foster-mamas, birth-mamas, step-mamas, bonus-mamas and surrogate-mamas. Whatever the shape and size of your family Love is what makes "Real”
I am praying today for every Mama who has lost a child and knows that a phone call or a card isn't coming.
I am praying so hard today for all of us.
~Kerlin