The Many Faces of Mother's Day

Mother's Day approaches like a prism, casting different lights and shadows for each of us. While greeting cards and commercials often portray a singular version of celebration, the reality is far more complex, more textured, and ultimately, more human.

For some, it’s a day of loving recognition. For others, a tender ache. A reminder of loss, absence, or longing.

Many of us experience a tapestry of emotions: gratitude woven with resentment, joy braided with grief, or the private reckoning of a path not taken.

The Distance Between Us

My own relationship with Mother's Day mirrors the complexity of my relationship with my mother. As a child, I eagerly crafted handmade cards with colorful markers, small offerings of love and hope. As an adult, I sometimes arranged celebratory lunches, seeking to create a stronger connection between us where there was often an underlying awkwardness.

Now, with an ocean separating us—me in New York, her in London—there is a distance that extends beyond geography.

Love has always lived between us. But so has an invisible barrier: a wall that has varied in height and thickness over the years but never fully disappeared. Time spent with my mother often stirs a familiar ache. Unresolved feelings that repeat themselves in quiet, wearying patterns. Patterns that leave me feeling drained rather than nourished.

The Stories We're Told vs. The Lives We Live

What made this even harder was how rarely I saw relationships like ours reflected back to me. The cultural narrative around motherhood tends to tell a singular story: mothers and daughters as best friends, confidantes, kindred spirits. When my experience didn’t align with that script, I questioned myself. Was I ungrateful? Was I failing as a daughter?

Recently, over tea in Bryant Park, I reconnected with an old friend of my sister’s. As we reminisced, she shared memories of my mother—stories that painted a different portrait than the one I knew. To the outside world, my mother could be warm and welcoming. But inside our home, affection was more subdued, rarely expressed aloud or through physical gestures. Love lived quietly in the background.

Finding Peace in Acceptance

For a long time, I resented this. I wanted the kind of mother-daughter bond I saw some of my friends enjoy: easy, tactile, unreserved. At different points, I tried to recreate that closeness, believing that if I just tried harder, loved better, showed up more brightly, we could reach each other. But we would always return to the same space, the same emotional distance. And each time, the hurt would deepen.

The geographical distance of the past decade has afforded me some clarity along with space. After years of trying to build the relationship I thought I should have with my mum, I’ve come to accept the one we do have. I’ve learned how to meet my own needs with tenderness, and to find nurturing in other relationships that feel more reciprocal.

In truth, boundaries have probably saved the relationship I still have with my mother. Without them, we might have drifted too far apart to find our way back to each other, in the same way that my sister has drifted from us all.

This acceptance has not come easily. Our culture rarely validates relationships that fall outside of the expected mold, especially when it comes to motherhood. I feel this even more acutely as someone who has chosen not to become a mother myself.

It’s not a choice I speak of often. Partly because it’s still so misunderstood. Mostly because the emotional labor of explaining, defending, or justifying my choice to others is work I am no longer willing to take on. There are too many assumptions. Too many judgments. Too many moments when someone else's curiosity asks me to excavate something deeply personal for their benefit, not my own.

Instead, I choose to hold that part of my story close. Not because I am ashamed, but because it is sacred. And perhaps because I am still piecing it together in my own heart. But make no mistake, I own my choice.

Honoring Our Whole Truth

In my work of holding space for other women, I see what happens when we deny parts of ourselves. I see the slow, painful erosion that occurs when we edit our lives to fit the narrow templates we are handed. Healing begins when we honor the whole truth of who we are, especially the parts that don’t fit neatly onto greeting cards or societal scripts. When we choose to name, witness, and honor our own stories, we create the possibility for deeper presence, fuller belonging, and true transformation.

Mother's Day can be a celebration of what is, but also a reckoning with what isn’t. It can be joyful and heavy, tender and tangled, sacred and complicated. All at once.

However you find yourself feeling as Mother's Day approaches, know this: honoring the whole of your experience is an act of courage. It’s a quiet revolution against every story that told you only certain versions of love were worthy.

When we give voice to the fullness of who we are—the beauty and the ache, the longing and the letting go—we reclaim our right to belong to ourselves.

If you feel called to honor your story through ceremony, to create a space where every part of you is seen and valued, I would be honored to guide you.

Discover how ceremonies can honor your story here.

Reclaiming your story is an act of power. It starts when we honor our truth.