Navigating Mother’s Day When It’s Complicated

Sunday March 15th, is Mother's Day in the UK. As a therapist working with grief and bereavement, I know this day is rarely simple.

The feelings can begin weeks before when the shops start filling up with cards, flowers, and carefully curated gift sets. There's no escape from it. Social media fills with glowing images of smiling mothers, daughters, and sons. And if you've lost your mum through death, estrangement, divorce, abandonment, addiction, or so many other painful ways, it can feel like a spotlight shines on what's missing in your life.

And it can be even more layered than that. Perhaps you are a mum yourself and would love to celebrate that, but grief sits alongside it. Perhaps your own children are estranged from you. Perhaps you longed to be a mum and that hasn't happened. Perhaps your relationship with your mum was complicated, and you're grieving something that never quite was.

The gap between the perfect images online and our messy, real, human experience can make everything feel so much harder.

I spoke recently on the Motherless Mothers podcast about navigating the last 11 years without my own Mum. You can find it on this blog page. They are a wonderful organisation if you are a Mum missing your own Mum.

In the meantime, here are some things that might help you get through this Sunday:

1. Give yourself permission to feel whatever comes up. There's no right way to feel. Grief, relief, anger, love, numbness, all of it is valid. You don't have to perform happiness, and you don't have to wallow either.

2. Limit social media. You are not obligated to scroll through content that causes you pain. Step away, mute keywords, or take the day off entirely. It's an act of self-compassion, not weakness.

3. Be intentional about how you honour your mum. Light a candle. Visit somewhere she loved. Play a song that reminds you of her. Write her a letter. Grief needs somewhere to go, give it a gentle, meaningful place.

4. If you are a mum and your children want to celebrate you, let them. You are allowed to hold both grief and joy at the same time. They can coexist. Receiving love doesn't diminish what you feel about your Mum. It doesn’t look like you don’t miss her just because you allow yourself to be happy.

5. Tell someone how you're feeling. You don't have to carry this quietly. Let the people close to you know what today might bring up, and what might help.

6. Be gentle with yourself. Make the day smaller if you need to. Cancel plans if that's what you need. Eat something nourishing. Rest. Do whatever makes Sunday feel survivable and maybe even ok.

You are not alone in finding this day difficult. If you'd like support, I'm here.