Sharing Mother's Day
There’s something deeply healing about realizing love doesn’t shrink when it’s shared. It expands.
(Personal life, post. Please skip if that does not interest you)
For a long time, I viewed Mother’s Day through the lens of ownership. It was my day. My breakfast. My flowers. My recognition. My moment to feel appreciated after years of pouring myself into everyone else. And I was going to soak up every minutes of it. Year after year!
Somewhere along the way, I absorbed this idea that motherhood was a territory to defend instead of a relationship to nurture. I didn’t even realize how much pressure that mindset created until life handed me another option.
Maybe you need that option too. But probably for other reasons.
When Mal first transitioned, Mother’s Day quietly changed shape. Mal, of course, on that first year was really understanding about what I might have been thinking or processing.
We didn’t have to share Mother’s Day. Not yet. Not until I was ready. And if I was never ready. That would be okay, too.
At first, I resisted it internally more than I admitted out loud. Not because I didn’t love her, but because I was scared that sharing the day somehow meant losing part of myself. Other people reinforced that fear constantly. The comments would come from every direction.
From friends. Family. Authors.
“But you’re not going to SHARE Mother’s Day, are you?”
“That’s YOUR day.”
“YOU gave birth to her, not Mal.”
People said these things like they were protecting me, but what they were really doing was asking me to choose a side in a battle I didn’t want to fight.
Mal and I have been a team. The best team. Since 1997. And yes, during the beginning of Mal’s transition I was really scared, really scared, that the team wouldn’t survive.
They acted as though love was a pie with limited slices and every person at the table threatened to take something from me. That if someone say happy mother’s day to Mal it meant I had not given birth to Eva or had not been her SAHM for years.
Like it could discount who I was. Did I really believe that?
Seven year’s ago, I didn’t know what to think.
I was hurt more easily back then. More insecure. More afraid of being replaced. I was worried if I didn’t do the thing everyone wanted me to, they’d be disappointed in me.
But everyone wanted something different from me so I had to figure out what I wanted to do. I couldn’t please all of them. This in and of itself, caused me major life panic.
But that year, I’m not sure when I decided we would celebrate Mother’s Day together. Not until I went and got a Mother’s Day cake and put both our names on it.
How could I teach Eva that Mal and I as woman and parents are equals if we were pretending I’m the only one celebrating mother’s day?
There is something beautiful about sitting at a table where love overlaps instead of divides. There’s peace in realizing children benefit when the adults in their lives stop guarding titles and start building bridges. I no longer need the day to prove my importance because my place in my Eva’s live was never actually threatened in the first place.
Love is not a competition.
A healthy family is not built through emotional scarcity.
And motherhood is not diminished because another woman is also loved and appreciated.
I think back now to all the people who warned me not to “give up” my day, and I wish I could tell them what I know now.
Strength is not demanding ownership over every tradition.
Strength is being secure enough to widen the table.
Strength is understanding that joy shared becomes joy multiplied.
Strength is choosing connection over control.
Strength is putting ego aside.
The old version of me believed love had to be protected through boundaries and separation. The stronger version of me understands that love often grows best through generosity.
Today, Mother’s Day feels warmer. Softer. Bigger.
Less performative.
Less exhausting.
More honest.
It no longer revolves around making sure I receive enough validation to feel secure. Instead, it has become a reflection of the kind of family culture I actually want to create: one rooted in unity, grace, and emotional abundance.
And I’m proud of that.
Because seven years ago, I was still learning that being valued and being shared are not opposites. They are the same thing.
Now I understand that those Mom’s maybe felt threatened by my choices because they wouldn’t want it to happen to them. They were dysregulated. I wasn’t.
I was afraid.
But no more. Instead I stand with love and when I stand in Mal’s love, I stand in the spotlight.