How I am choosing to celebrate Mother’s day when all I have done is miscarry

Miscarriage is really common in my family.

For me, no baby I conceived lived beyond 8 weeks. So Mother’s Day has been a very tender day for me. I have walked with this tender spot for years now, watching how the week before Mother’s Day, I feel fine, only to be sideswiped by the feelings of grief and loss by Friday night. I then spiral into a lonely, depressive state until Sunday night, only to resurrect somehow intake for work Monday morning. This year has started no different.

Every year around this time, I would see all of the school children, my nieces and nephews bring handmade gifts and poems to their moms, some of whom would throw the thing away only days after receiving it. I would watch their children’s faces light up as they would hand their mom yet another macaroni bracelet or sloppy painted flower vase or adorably written poem, knowing that the children had worked on these things for days, maybe even weeks and were so excited to give them to the woman of their lives.

I ache, knowing that my own could never do that and how, if given the chance, I would treasure that mother’s day macaroni bracelet like a tennis bracelet or frame and display that finger-painted art like a Mattise, and wrap my arms around them in sincere appreciation.