When Mother’s Day Is Both Love and Loss

Mother’s Day can be beautiful. It can be brunches, flowers, cards, phone calls, and photos shared with smiling captions.

But for some of us, Mother’s Day carries more than one feeling.

It can be love and gratitude. It can be absence. It can be memories that still catch in your throat. It can be the ache of missing your mom, missing the life you had, or trying to celebrate while part of your heart is standing in a very different year.

For me, Mother’s Day is complicated.

Six years ago, my husband died from COVID on May 12. But the last time I saw him was May 10, when he was being taken away by ambulance. That day was Mother’s Day.

So while the world was celebrating mothers, I was watching my life change in a way I could not yet fully understand.

Two years later, I lost my mom, also to COVID. And with that loss, Mother’s Day became even heavier. It became a day layered with grief from different directions. A day that asks me to be a mother while missing my own. A day that reminds me of love, but also of the people who are no longer here to share it.

I don’t say that for sympathy. I say it because I know I’m not the only one who finds certain holidays hard.

Sometimes the hardest days are the ones everyone else seems to move through so easily.

The calendar does not ask if you are ready. It just turns the page. Holidays arrive with their cheerful displays and expected emotions, even when your heart is still trying to catch up.

And on days like this, I think it is okay to admit the truth.

You can be grateful for your children and still feel sad.

You can love your life and still miss the one you had.

You can celebrate and grieve in the very same breath.

This Mother’s Day, I am driving nine hours to Toronto to have dinner with my children and spend a few days with my dad.

That may not sound like a grand plan, but to me, it feels like a quiet act of choosing life in the middle of grief.

Not pretending the day is easy. Not forcing myself to feel something neat and polished. Just moving toward the people I love. Letting the road give me space to think, cry, breathe, remember, and arrive.

That is something grief has taught me again and again: healing does not always look like feeling better.

Sometimes healing looks like packing the car.

Sometimes it looks like showing up for dinner.

Sometimes it looks like sitting beside someone who understands the missing.

Sometimes it looks like going, even when your heart is carrying a lot.

If Mother’s Day is hard for you, I hope you give yourself permission to experience it honestly.

You do not have to make the day look like anyone else’s. You do not have to post the perfect tribute, attend the perfect gathering, or pretend your heart is lighter than it is.

You can honor what hurts. You can remember who you miss. You can be thankful for what remains. You can step away when you need to. You can laugh if laughter comes. You can cry if tears come.

None of it means you are doing the day wrong.

Grief has a way of changing holidays. But it does not erase love. If anything, it shows us how deeply love stays.

So today, I am holding both.

The ache of what I lost.

The gratitude for who is still here.

The memories that hurt.

The moments I still get to make.

And maybe that is enough for this Mother’s Day.

Not perfect. Not painless. But honest.

If today is tender for you too, I hope you know this: you are not alone. You are allowed to move through this day gently. You are allowed to carry grief and love together.

And when you are ready, even if ready just means getting through the next hour, you are allowed to keep going.

Grieve. Go. Grow.

Even here.

Especially here.