A gentle reflection on the layered emotions many women experience around Mother’s Day, including grief, love, longing, and connection
Mother’s Day can bring up a wide range of emotions, including joy, love, grief, longing, and reflection. For many women, it is not a simple or straightforward day, but one that holds layers of experience all at once.
In this reflection, I share a conversation from a recent nature walk and explore how Mother’s Day emotions can feel complex, especially when life has included loss, fertility challenges, or different experiences of motherhood and family connection. My intention is to create space for whatever you are feeling, without needing to make it fit a single narrative of how this day “should” be.
Why Mother’s Day can feel emotionally complex
Yesterday I went on a beautiful nature walk with a friend, and as it usually does when we catch up, the conversation moved quickly into deep and heart felt sharing.
She’s a single mama, and we spoke openly about how Mother’s Day can feel, the way it can bring a mix of emotions all at once, joy and love for family, alongside grief, longing, loneliness, reflection, or a sense of what is missing or not quite how life was imagined.
And as she shared, it felt so familiar in the wider sense of what so many women carry through this time.
Personal reflections on Mother’s Day and fertility grief
This is something I know not just through listening, but through lived experience as well.
There have been seasons in my life, including a deeply tender fertility journey, where this time of year felt incredibly raw and heartbreaking.
And even now, life can still bring its own layered emotional texture around this day, alongside gratitude for what is present.
The relationship with our own mothers
There can also be reflection around our own mothers in this mix, and the complex layers that exist there too, whether through closeness, distance, absence, or subtle forms of disconnect that so many of us carry in different ways.
There are so many ways women move through this, often quietly, often holding far more than is seen.
The many emotions Mother’s Day can bring
These kinds of days can hold so much.
For some, they are full of connection and celebration, maybe your first Mother’s Day as a mama!
For others, they bring grief, longing, reflection, or a quiet sense of distance from how it is often portrayed.
And for many, it’s all of these things at once, moving through different layers of emotion.
There is no single way to experience Mother’s Day
What feels most important is that we have space to meet ourselves honestly in whatever is present, without needing to make it anything other than what it truly is.
Creating space for whatever you are feeling
If you feel called to honour your own journey, or offer a gift to a woman you love who could really use nourishment and support right now, I have beautiful gift certificates available (both physical and online).
They can be used for any of my offerings, from massage, to birth healing, womb-based sessions, to deeper journeys.
A space to soften.
A space to be met.
A space to come home to yourself again.
However this time is feeling for you, be gentle with yourself.
If you feel called to honour your own journey, or support a woman you love, I have gift certificates available that can be used across my offerings.
A space of support, nourishment, and deep care.
You can explore my offerings here.
