does mother’s day trigger you? read this

Mother’s Day, an Awkward Parental Commemoration Day

Warning: This is a TLDR kinda post. Skip to the end if you want tips on how to get through Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day. Yikes. It’s that time of year again when all I see are “Gifts to Buy Mom for Mother’s Day” listicles. And my social media feeds get flooded with images of my friends shouting to the world about their mom. This is when I pause and wonder, “Is this how they really feel?”

When you don’t have a good relationship with your mom, it’s hard to feel happy or want to celebrate Mother’s Day. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way, but when no one talks about the Other Mother, we can end up feeling very alone.

Mother’s Day can bring up feelings like, “Why wasn’t my childhood like that? How come I didn’t get the love that I deserved? Is it bad that I feel bad?” So publicly singing the praises of our mom because we’re told we’re supposed to is the last thing we want to do, every second Sunday in May.

Mother Love is a Loaded Idea

The concept of Mother love is such a loaded topic because everyone expects you to love your mom, unconditionally, even if it isn’t the case the other way around. “It wears a sacred mantle and is protected from criticism: ‘I have this magical store of maternal love, and therefore you are ungrateful and ungenerous’” (source unknown).

So, no, you don’t have to be a mom to essentially just care for another human being. Motherhood is a beautiful thing but you don’t have to put it on a pedestal above any other person caring for someone (or something) else.

So it was a very nice surprise last year when Canadian green beauty brand Three Ships recognized this through an email in my inbox titled, “Opt out of Mother’s Day emails,” acknowledging the sensitivity around the holiday.

Not All Mothers are Created Equal

In her annual Mother’s Day rant on Facebook, author Anne Lamott says, “Mothering perpetuates the dangerous idea that all parents are somehow superior to non-parents.”

I completely agree with this sentiment. Just because you give birth to a child doesn’t mean you’ll do a good job parenting (think Mother Gothel in Entangled). And not all childless women are un-motherly. My godmother, for example, was the supportive maternal figure who filled in for my mom.

Lamott also says, “I hate the way the holiday makes all non-mothers, and the daughters of dead mothers, and the mothers of dea d or lost children, feel the deepest kind of grief and failure. The non-mothers must sit in their churches, temples, mosques, recovery rooms and pretend to feel good about the day while they are excluded from a holiday that benefits no one but Hallmark and See’s.”

And I’m not even going to get into the current issue of overturning Roe vs Wade in the US… the choice of not becoming a mother (or at least not yet) is important too.

My Relationship with My Mom: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

Okay, this is a bit TMI and I might regret this later, but… I’m going to touch on some personal highs and lows in my own relationship with my mom. Why? Mainly because many years ago I wrote my first (and only) piece on my mother-daughter relationship. I was trying to be positive because that’s also what society tells you do be (“Good vibes only!” Bleh). But a good friend who knew me and my mom from a young age astutely point out something was missing. It was as if I excused my mom’s actions because her difficult past was a pass for misdeeds.

The Bad Things

It’s hard to talk about the ‘bad things’ that happened when we didn’t grow up on food stamps (like my mom did) nor were scared shit with an alcoholic parent. It’s tricky when the ‘bad’ is emotional damage (Steven He fans will know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout) because those scars are invisible. Sometimes I wish I had visible scars to prove what my brother and I have been through, but it doesn’t work that way, and you’ll just have to trust me. 

A lot a lot of growing up was about survival. Making sure I always appeased my mom so I could get what I needed: basic necessities like milk for our cereal addiction, her permission to go out with friends, my monthly dose of wardrobe updates, an emotionally stable household, and of course, we all need love to survive.

Some ‘bad’ things that happened were hiding things from us. She hid my razor and my brother’s PlayStation and flat out lied about it.  She gave me the cold shoulder for a month because I said, “Good morning” to her. What’s wrong with that? Oh, it’s because I didn’t say “Good morning, mother.” She locked me out whenever I came home late because she cared so much about me but I was making her worry, so she had to do it to teach me a lesson.

The Ugly Things

What’s the difference between the Bad and the Ugly? I think of the Ugly as something that crosses into your long-term. Maybe hiding my brother’s toys was a short term pain before we was reunited with them, but if it affects his ability to trust his own judgement… that’s a completely different story. It’s the kinds of things I’m working really hard on to not pass down to my daughter.

Dr Ramani, a popular YouTube therapist, puts it best: “A narcissistic parent damages your developmental trajectory, sets you up for a lifetime of making excuses for people’s bad behaviour: invalidating yourself, living with anxiety, grappling with guilt, shame and anger and typically all three on any given day.”

I’m going to take a wild guess, but I feel most first-generation Asian North American kids grow up feeling never good enough. For me, it was a constant contention between being a high-achiever and self-defeater: “you must be a star to be worthy of me, but you must never be as good as me” (source unknown).  This was so innocuous that I never questioned why I never felt good enough, even when I was achieving things that everyone else thought were amazing.

One very clear example of how I could never ‘win’ is the time when my parents came to visit me at the hospital when my daughter was born. When she held my little one for the first time, the first thing she said as she turned to my brother was, “When are you going to have one?” That was a stake to my heart. I had given her a grandchild that she’s been yearning for years and, still, not good enough.

It’s hard to illustrate without painting your parent like a complete villain. But TBH, a huge part of this felt like I was in a horror story, trapped in the prison of your own mind. All these seemingly small manipulations, gaslighting, put downs, they all add up to huge insecurities that take a lifetime to unlearn. For two decades, I’ve been searching for answers: Do I not understand Chinese culture? Everyone loves my mom, so I clearly must be bad, right? And because of that, my whole future changed. I took jobs where managers devalued my work, dated people who treated me poorly, and put up with friends who used me like an audience.

When you distort a child’s reality, that’s when things turn Ugly. In How to Do the Work, Nicole LaPerla says, “When you don’t trust yourself, you outsource your worth to others. When you do that you become chronically dependent on other people’s perceptions of who you are. Rather than making decisions based on your own inner knowing, you make them through someone else’s perspective, allowing another person  to validate or invalidate your reality. This becomes a vicious cycle that leaves us feeling constantly destabilized – and continues your disconnection from the inner guidance of your authentic self.”

It’s been an Ugly two decades for me. I can only talk about this now because I’m in a better place, not living in a place where fear dictates all decisions.

The Good Things

Lastly, I’m going to talk about the Good things that I gained from my relationship with my mother. There are always silver linings to be found, as bittersweet as that may be.

When I look back on my childhood, there are so many positive things my mom taught me that I find myself constantly thanking her. My mom taught me things like you should always ask, simply because you can and that it’s important to acknowledge people by their names to show you care. The former has gotten me a lot of good deals in my life, and the latter a lot of great coworkers.

When we were kids, most families didn’t travel at all, like they do now. If a kid in your class took a trip somewhere, that was a big deal. My mom taught us to live the Chinese proverb, “It is better to travel ten thousand miles than to read ten thousand books“

She gave me three opportunities to live in China for couple of months at a time, and I have to say those were the most enriching travel experiences I’ve ever experienced, to live like a local and get to know my family in China. And then when I found an internship in New York, she helped set up my living situation and funded my learning there (internships were still unpaid at that time).

She’s helped make me become the person that I am, and for that I love her and I’m forever grateful.

My Journey as a Mom

It won’t come as a surprise, but the main reason why I couldn’t even think about kids until a later age was because I was so scared to pass on my bad traits, or worse, continue our toxic family dynamic. Of course, having financial stability mattered too, but it wasn’t as pressing. That says a lot given that houses in Vancouver had just passed the $1M mark.

When we finally decided to have kids, I was so happy. We did it on our own timeline and it was a very conscious decision. It wasn’t to make my mom – or anyone else for that matter – happy. I could have easily succumbed when I had aunties I hadn’t talked to in years call me up telling me, “You should have a kid. Your mom is bored.”

Because we made the decision on our own accord, I don’t feel resentment toward my daughter. There’s no “Ugh, you didn’t fix my relationship with my mom!” And hopefully that’s saving her a lifetime of therapy $

Then there are moments when I catch myself saying or doing things my parents used to do (“You’re so smart!” “If you don’t finish eating, I’ll (insert threat).” Even though I know they’re not good, they’re the only scripts I have to fall back on.

For the most part, I think we’re doing good (enough). She wants to be around us all the time, and so do we. It pains me when I have to peel myself away to do non-essential things, like penning this article.

I love her poufy hair, I love her chubby cheeks, and I love the dynamic personality she is. I think to myself every day, “I can’t believe you’re our daughter. I’m so lucky to have you in my life.”

I tell my husband that our biggest task as parents is to not put out her fire. Malala’s dad, Ziauddin, put it best, “What has made Malala so special and so bold and so poised? Don’t ask me what I did. Ask me what I did not do. I did not clip her wings, and that’s all.”

Whatever You Do, Don’t Reject Your Mom

With every relationship, there’s the good, the bad, and the ugly. But how do we make sense of it all?

At many junctions, I considered cutting off the relationship because I just needed mental sanity. But when I came across advice in books or through therapists, it just didn’t feel right. Maybe because in the back of my mind, I agreed with the thing that yoga teaches, that we are one. So if you reject someone, you’re rejecting yourself. How can that be good?

Like a cosmic coincidence, my brother brought to my attention a book that seemed to make sense of poor family dynamics that precisely aligned with my values.

In It Didn’t Start With You, Mark Wolynn writes,“When we reject our parents, we can’t see how we’re similar. The behaviours become disowned in us and are often projected onto t he people around us. Conversely, we can attract friends, romantic partners, or business associates who display the very behaviours we reject, allowing us myriad opportunities to recognize and heal the dynamic.”

Looking back now, I see it in some failed friendships too. I’ve come to think that it’s not them that’s the issue, it’s how I showed up in the relationships that drove people away. As unfortunate as that is, I learned from it.

This really helped discerning whether acceptance means submitting to a train wreck or it’s the wise thing to do: “It’s important not to expect your parents to be any different from who they are – the change will occur in you. The relationship dynamics may remain the same, but your perspective will be different. It’s not about recklessly throwing yourself in front of a moving train; it’s more about choosing the best route to make the journey.” (emphasis is mine)

Wolynn also believes that the problem isn’t how our parents wronged us, or didn’t love us the way we needed them to; the problem is how we continue to hold onto it, like leaving your hand on a stove burner even though you’ve received the message that it hurts. We can change how we feel towards our mom, even if the relationship doesn’t change.

This might be kind of (or really) strange, but try this: “Tell her, ‘Mom, I’ll try to take in your love just as it is, without judging it or expecting it to be different.” He says you don’t need to have a current relationship with your mom to do this, if you’re mom’s deceased or if you are estranged. At the end of the day, it all comes down to you. Even when your mom passes, you could still be holding onto grievances. That’s something I don’t wish on anybody.

Mothering: A Vision for The Future

When I started thinking about this article, a working title was, “How to Survive Mother’s Day this Year.” Not the most positive way to view motherhood, given all that moms are to us.

Yesterday, when I was in a group coaching session, someone shared their recent experiences with their teenage daughter. It surprised me that she was able to start building trust with her daughter after a few weeks of us going through this Positive Intelligence with Accountable Mind Coaching.

When she was at the food court with her daughter, she got a teenager’s ultimate stamp of approval: “My friends don’t like being seen at the mall with their moms. You’re different. You’re cool.” And without getting alarmed about her daughter’s future, she instead opened up the dialogue and got to the root of her daughters fears about the future, which on the surface looked like lack of ambition.

Seeing this from a real mom was beyond inspiring, to the point I’m going to shift my perspective from fearing life with a bratty teenager to being excited to what kind of person she’ll grow up to be. Hopefully she’ll be a someone who cares for others as much as she cares for herself, someone who stands up for what’s right even when it’s scary, and someone who strives to make a positiv difference – however great or small. That’s all we can hope for.

Making the Change: How to Deal with Mother’s Day

As unwilling as you might be to hear this, it’s your responsibility now – to mother yourself and to be the best for your kids.

On the Baggage Reclaim podcast, Natalie Lue says, “We are our own primary caregiver now. We can’t keep trying to chase our parents about unmet needs from the past.  It’s our job to meet our needs by making the choices that we need to make including how we take care of ourselves.”

So here are my self-care ways of handling Mother’s Day this year:

1. Stay Off Social Media: If bold praises of moms get to you like they affect me, it’s okay to turn off social media for a day or two. There’s not need to torture yourself. Plus, it’ll give you some likely much needed digital detox anyway.
2. Create New Traditions: Make up some Mother’s Day activities with other mom friends, if you’re a mom yourself. This year I’m hosting a Mother’s Day brunch celebrating with two mom friends. I’m taking this holiday into my own hands, and making it my own, with mimosas in tow. I don’t even have champagne flutes, but I’m going out to buy them this afternoon. That’s how serious I’m taking this.
3. Practice Visualization: Visualization is a strong tool that could help guide us to a place of a healthy relationship. Try to see a past instance when things didn’t go well with your mother. What could you have done differently? Then do that IRL. Use this for setting up your future too. What would you like your relationship with your children to look like in 10 years? Then ask yourself, who do you have to be /what do you need to do for it to turn out that way?
4. Bring Flowers for Her: Bring flowers to a maternal figure you look up to. Doesn’t have to be a godmother or aunt, it could even be the owner of your favourite bakery who always gave you good advice. But not the expensive bouquets florists love to make a killing on. Make it personal, cut flowers from your garden, or draw her flowers on a home-made greeting card. Nothing beats a personal touch.
5. Celebrate with Your (Chosen) Family:If you have siblings, maybe this is a good time to get together and celebrate with them. Turn Mother’s Day into another sort of day to celebrate another family member, biological or from your chosen family. Anne Lamott sums it up: “My main gripe with Mother’s Day is that it feels incomplete and imprecise. The main thing that ever helped mothers was other people mothering them, including aunties and brothers; a chain of mothering that keeps the whole shebang afloat. I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother, who unconsciously raised me to self-destruct; and partly because of the extraordinary love of her best friends, my own best friends’ mothers, and from surrogates, many of whom were not women at all but gay men
6. Watch Therapy Videos: For people who have had too experiences with their mom, this last suggestion is going to sound whack (or insert whatever Gen Z is saying these days). When it finally hit me that my family dynamic will never change if the rest of my family members weren’t going to step up, the only solace I found was in listening to Dr Ramani and Dr Patrick Teahan’s YouTube videos on narcissism.
7. Do the Work: Read the Books: This bullet point was added after I published this article, because some readers reached out and shared some books that helped them too!
   • The Emotionally Absent Mother, by Jasmin Lee Corri
   • Adult Children of Emotionally Absent Parents, Lindsay C. Gibson
   • Shadow Daughter: A Memoir of Estrangement, by Harriet Brown
   • It Didn’t Start With You, by Mark Wolynn
   • How to Do the Work, by Dr Nicole LaPerla
8. Grieve the Relationship: Grief is such a touchy subject. For those of us who lost a mother, are estranged from one, or don’t feel a strong connection with your mom, it’s okay to take some time to grieve the relationship we wish we could have had on Mother’s Day. Here are some low-cost ways that helped me and a 90s sad playlist to boot.
9. Check in with Friends: If you have friends you know who had miscarriages, stillbirths, or their kids passed away, check in with them. If you have friends whose moms have passed away, check in with them too. Mother’s Day is messy and not everyone will be celebrating it.
10. Reach Out, Consciously: I don’t know who said this, but it’s wise: “When you choose to engage with your parents it has to come from a conscious place of awareness, not from a place of trying to meet unmet needs.” You can still reach out on Mother’s Day, just know that it comes from a good place in your heart, and whatever her reaction, it’s not personal, it’s just an expression of what her inner world looks like.

What a long article. Thank you for making it to the end. And I wish you a wonderful ‘Maternal Figures Day’!

xo, Miranda