On Mother’s Day
By: Jennifer Drake
Tags: Marriage, Parenthood, Mothers Day, Emotional Abuse, Motherhood

I wrote this last year when it felt like Mother’s Day was a day I would never be excited to celebrate. This year I feel okay. Progress is slow, but it’s possible. If I’m being honest with myself, the hardest part about divorce for me — and Mother’s Day — has been grieving the way I thought I’d be raising my child. I envisioned it with a helpful, supportive, respectful partner. I didn’t have that when I was married, and I don’t have it now (though I’m hopeful for it). But life now is good in ways I hadn’t imagined were possible.

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The first time I celebrated Mother’s Day, I helped my new husband make me blueberry pancakes. I was seven months pregnant. I coached him through mixing the ingredients for a while, and then it seemed easier to just do it myself.

My first Mother’s Day with a live human child, I was gifted a really expensive (for me) purse and matching wallet — he did not work, so I suppose I technically bought it for myself. I remember arriving home late from work that day because I was too sick to get on the train. I was sobbing on the floor of the lactation room, exhausted and trying to pump because I wouldn’t be home in time to breastfeed my son, when my coworker came in to scoop me off the floor and drive me home. Our rent was late that month. The following years, there were flowers, cards, photos. Always early, because my ex couldn’t keep a secret.

These grand gestures, however enabled by my own planning and support and labor, were meant to evoke my gratitude but also my silence. In the moments that I was crushed by the responsibility of carrying our partnership and our family, Mother’s Day was the alibi he needed to prove me wrong. Are you forgetting the trouble I went to for you? Nothing I do is ever good enough for you. I now understand it to be gaslighting and dismissal. At the time I only recognized it as my fault.

Despite knowing how these joyful times would be used against me, they were among the only moments that he made a fuss. They are the few times I felt celebrated for my role, despite being diminished for most of the rest of the year. I empirically understood that I mattered to my family, but only in the moments in which he validated me did I know it down to my bones.

I feel guilty for not letting these moments go. I feel guilty for remembering them fondly. I feel guilty for missing them. Recovering from my marriage has been re-training my brain to know who I am and why I am valuable and why I matter down to my bones simply because I know it to be true. But every year, even though I empirically know I am important and that life as a divorced mom is so much better than before, I can’t retrain my brain to celebrate this day.

And yet, life is good. Not just better than before. Actually, actively good. And I’m holding space for the parents for whom that is not true. For moms who are relishing this day, grateful for any little break from the normal grind of endless responsibility, the endless remembering. For moms who are disappointed in the way your partner and children showed up for this holiday but are afraid to say so for fear of backlash, belittling, or punishment. For moms who know that as soon as tomorrow, maybe even tonight, you will be subject to insults and indifference.

I wish for an end to this baseline oppression for you. I wish for a full recovery. I wish for a full throated celebration of all you bring to your family and to the world.