Mother’s Day presents, mothers and me
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Mother’s Day presents, mothers and me
So here it comes again, the Mother’s Day celebration . . .
When I was younger I used to go shopping with my dad for Mother’s Day presents and buy some slippers, a dressing gown and some chocolates. Then I became a mother and it was my turn to be given slippers, fluffy socks and a dressing gown. Oh yes, much to my dismay the cycle continued.
No matter which end of it I was on, I never really got what Mother’s Day was all about. It seemed to look like a celebration, a thank you for all the things mums do: but really, do they only get one day of celebration a year out of the 365 they spend loving, nurturing and caring for us?
Do we ever really stop to consider that as women, we are always mothers – that we do not actually have a day off from being who we naturally are, and aren’t we to be celebrated every day and not just on one day of the year?
After my first year of being a mother I began to seriously question the Mother’s Day present saga of fluffy slippers and dressing gowns – did I want to pass this cycle onto my daughter? Did I want to end up buying fluffy goods for her when she became a mother? NO!
Here I stopped and began to look at how I was as a woman ...
- Was I a woman, or had this become lost amongst the façade and picture of what it was to be a mother, thinking that being a mother was what made me a woman, that I needed a day a year to be appreciated and celebrated,
OR
- Could I turn everything on its head, and appreciate and celebrate me – the woman I am every day long before anything I do as the woman I am?
I really needed others to confirm how amazing I am when I forget it myself. ‘I know’ how amazing I am in my head, but what I didn’t allow myself was to feel it: drench myself in accepting, knowing and enjoying what a beautiful and amazing ‘woman’ I am before anything else – daughter, wife, mother, grandmother.
So now with this newfound realisation, a true Mother’s Day present to me has become a day not about fluffy slippers, but celebrating the beautiful and amazing woman I am and appreciating how this ever deepening sense of self-worth infuses everything I choose to do. I am a woman who spends time every day mothering, but it is not all that I am.
Our family’s Mother’s Day celebration has become less about presents and more an extension of every other day that I live, enjoy and celebrate as the woman I am. Mothering, nurturing and tenderness are not duties but gifts I bestow upon myself every day, not last thing but first, letting them naturally flow onto my family and throughout our lives, 365 days a year.
Filed under
Mother's Day, Motherhood, Appreciation, Acceptance
