Mother's Day

Holding the sacred space between joy and sorrow

There’s something really odd happening this Mother’s Day. Retailers are giving people an option to not receive Mother’s Day advertising. I’ve been on the planet for a good long time now and I don’t ever remember this happening before.

It’s a bit confusing and to be honest I’m not sure how I feel about it. There is a skeptical part of me that sees this as part of the continued erasure of motherhood in our society [that’s a post for another day]. But there is also the compassionate, empathetic part of me that understands that sometimes motherhood - how we experienced it as a daughter and how we are experiencing it with our own children, born and unborn- is not always a straight line of pleasure and perfection. Rather, at best, it is a crooked path strewn with all sorts of things that can both delight and derail us all in a single moment.

Motherhood is as a different an experience as you can get for each of us called to this vocation. With time, and taking my own journey, I’ve come to understand just how painfully different it can be. And that needs to be honored.

With that idea in mind, the skeptic is taking a seat and I’m gonna let compassion write this post.

My story

Pregnancy came easy for me. The good Lord saw fit to gift my husband and I with 3 kiddos in 4 1/2 years. After number 3, my body needed a break. So we settled in and enjoyed the gifts we’d been given in those 3 little treasures.

For as long as I can remember, all I ever wanted to be was a mom. Well, there was a short period of time where I was going to be a back up singer and tour with Barry Manilow but I digress. I loved being a new mom but if I’m being honest I struggled - first with a debilitating post partum depression that lasted for 6 months that no one knew about until they did and then they didn’t really know what to do about it. This was followed in quick succession by two difficult pregnancies, one of which ended in both a traumatic birth experience and, thank you Lord, a healthy baby.

Those early years were a cacophony of joyful noises and some deafening silences as isolation led to self-doubt - or did self-doubt lead to isolation? Regardless, I struggled to find my way. The longing to have another baby hit again at around age 31. But we waited and by age 32, my body broke again. At 35, with 5 surgeries in 3 years, I ended up having a full hysterectomy.

With that surgery came the realization that I would never, ever carry another baby in my womb again and I became part of a club I didn’t know existed. I saw that same pained realization on the faces of friends and family for whom infertility had been a life long struggle. I just hadn’t known about it; or maybe I just didn’t notice. When you’re in the highs and lows of your own season of joy, sometimes it is hard to recognize the season of sorrow in others.

My loss and the realization that I was now among so many others for whom having a baby was out of the question was the beginning of praying for women for whom motherhood was not a reality. In my own sadness and grief, I found that by adding their intentions to each bead when praying the first mystery of the Joyful Mysteries - The Annunciation - I felt like I was finally acknowledging something I had missed in their lives for so long. Praying for first one, and then another and then another, I ran out of beads so I grouped them together: For women and their families who are carrying the cross of infertility…It felt like the right thing to do, this praying for the pain that not having an annunciation moment can bring. Those I was praying for appreciated the intentionality: not just for the prayers, but more so for the acknowledgement of their cross.

Seen

Here’s the thing about praying for others’ crosses. Once you see one cross, you start to see all the other crosses as well. Over the years, as I’ve shared the story of my own motherhood journey, I’ve come know women who have suffered not only infertility but miscarriages, abortions, still births, the death of a newborn a few hours after birth, the untimely (but really is there ever the right time?) death of a child at all ages -from infancy to adulthood.

There are so many child-loss crosses I hadn’t even know about until I did: I’ve prayed for and with women who have lost children to illness, to suicide, to murder, to accidents, to the streets, to addiction, to a world that holds only pain and sorrow for them.

And then there are the women for whom motherhood is a minefield - either they are estranged from their children or they are estranged from their own mothers. Or for some it’s both.

So many women I know are living out their vocation of singlehood and while the desire for children is there, they do not have children of their own. Some are beautiful witnesses to spiritual motherhood; others are unhappy and resentful, buried under the weight of unfulfilled dreams.

Finally, there are the mothers without earthly mothers as ours have gone to their eternal reward. The pain and grief overwhelm us for either the best of reasons or the worst. It’s a spectrum for sure.

Almost to the woman, motherhood has not gone as expected. It is rarely talked about though. We hide this unmet expectation afraid to be on the wrong side of a conversation, of causing the other pain with our own woundedness.

No wonder skipping Mother’s Day has become a new trend.

But in skipping it, I wonder if it’s just one more way to avoid talking about the hard things. It’s another way for society to gloss over the messy parts and in doing so erases the good things, too. It becomes another way to avoid hard conversations that might shine a spotlight on issues that need to be addressed.

I wonder

What if, instead of skipping Mother’s Day, we acknowledge the crosses and scars we as mothers bear on our unique journey of motherhood? What would it look like if instead of ignoring, we lift one another up? What if we become Veronica and Simon to the other, ministering to and helping the other carry their cross even for a little while so they don’t feel so unseen, unknown, unloved?

Can you imagine?

There is an amazing author, Laura Kelly Fanucci, who writes the most incredible poetry and posts about praying both sides. Founder of Mothering Spirit and all around rockstar encourager and champion on Instagram [@ThisMessyGrace], she often challenges her readers to hold close the tension between the joy of what has been and what is, while we acknowledge the loss of what was or never could be.

This holding tension, the both-and was revolutionary and critical to my healing journey. Thinking about my motherhood and celebrating all that I had overcome to flourish in that season, didn’t mean I couldn’t hold space for, pray with and for, those women for whom motherhood was being experienced differently. Or not at all.

We can and should hold space for both the joy and sorrow.

It is sacred space.

Know of my prayers for you

As I’ve got a little life under my belt, I’ve learned that saying you’ll pray for people and actually praying for them are two completely different things. A few years ago, overwhelmed by the sheer number of women in my life for whom motherhood was fraught with pain and loss, I was struggling to find a way to pray for each of them intentionally. The desire was there but, out of scrupulosity maybe, if I couldn’t get in each name each time, it seemed like I was being disingenuous in saying I would pray for them.

The Lord, who knows my chaotic heart so well, told me to keep it simple. I love that you finally see them. Just bring them to me. I know their wounds. Trust me.

Thinking about the sacred space where joy and sorrow meet, I went back to offering up the Joyful Mysteries for mothers everywhere. Now when I pray the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, I often will do so for those who are carrying unique crosses on their motherhood journey, especially in the month of May. For each mystery, I offer up a praise of thanksgiving for my own joy and for Mary’s joy and then add a general petition in remembrance of the sacred space between the joy and sorrow of that mystery. Each Hail Mary in that decade is offered for a particular woman I know who is carrying that cross.

Sadly, I am still running out of beads before I run out of names.

It is not a perfect offering by any measure but it is all I have. I’m sure I’m not covering every possible scenario, not naming a particular pain or circumstance correctly, but I do it - and share it here - because I had to start somewhere and prayer is always the best place to start.

The Joyful Mysteries

There is nothing we as women experience that our Blessed Mother did not experience, too. Because she understands the height of our joy and the foot of the crosses we bear, she can hold that space sacred for us as we journey to her Son.

My prayer is that by uniting my joy with a prayer of thanksgiving with the seen and known sufferings of others, the space between joy and sorrow becomes a bit less awkward to navigate.

Here’s what I pray……

• The Annunciation: in thanksgiving for my own annunciation moments and in petition for women who have never had their own annunciation moments due to infertility and for those who desire children but are living out their vocation as a single woman.

• The Visitation: in thanksgiving for my own supportive community and in petition for women who experience an unplanned pregnancy and are alone and/or facing pressure to have an abortion and for women who have little or no support at home.

• The Nativity: in thanksgiving for 3 healthy babies and in petition for women whose own nativity experience ended in child loss through miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion.

• The Presentation: in thanksgiving for the lives of my children who are now in adulthood and in petition for women who have had children die before their time due to accidents, illness, suicide, or murder.

• The Finding at the Temple: in thanksgiving for the imperfect and beautiful relationships I have with each of my children and enjoyed with my own mother and in petition for women whose children have gone missing and for those women who have lost a child to the streets, to addiction, to a world that holds nothing good for them; for those who are estranged from their children or their own mothers; for those who are grieving the loss of their mother due to death.

Amen.