Mother's Day Is a Trap & That's OK

On Surrendering, Parenthood, Marriage, and Learning how to Love Yourself

I am taking a break from politics to write about finding joy in the midst of a messy life. My book is getting close, the only draw back for publishers is the size of my platform, so please like, subscribe and share INNER EMIGRE. This week Paul Ellie of The New Yorker and The New York Times bestselling author Domenica Ruta will be on my podcast to talk about their amazing books. Thanks for listening and supporting.

You want to know something funny? Not ha-ha funny, but funny sad? I wrote my first book about Catholic traditions and holidays. It was about how I grew up. The ironic part is that I often dread holidays. Not because I don’t like to celebrate, I do, but because there’s a ton of pressure on mothers to make holidays magical. So holidays often feel like a trap, or a test. The last kid’s birthday party at my house ended with the birthday boy in tears wanting his guests to go home. I also wanted his guests to go home so I could lay down.

Mother’s Day is one of the holidays that can feel like a trap. Women tend to be the ones in charge of presents, parties, and making things special for other people, so the day puts mothers in a bind. We have a tendency to want to micromanage everyone in our families to make a random Sunday in May “special” for ourselves. What a nightmare! Because, of course, other people do not want to be micromanaged. Forced fun is not fun. And maybe your spouse has to work, or your kid is sick, or there’s just no bandwidth for another freaking holiday.

My memoir, thankfully, is not about holidays or traditions. It’s about a time in my life when faith stopped making sense, when I was burned out and at the end of my rope, and didn’t know what I believed or wanted, and climbing and being outside helped me reconnect with my heart and find a new way forward. But I’m scared to publish this book because it’s also about my marriage.

So before it comes out, I need to get more comfortable writing about that part of my life. So here’s one thing I’ve learned 20 years in. Even if you are married to your favorite person in the world, as I am, you will fight. And every fight will be some version of the same fight. It will go like this, “You spent $400 at Target? Where do you think that money comes from? You think it’s just magic?” And then you will respond, “Dinner is made. The laundry is done. Our fussy baby is asleep. How do you think that all happens? Magic?”

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “That will not be me.” I read the same think pieces. The progressives will tell you that if you both work outside the home and split housework and parenting 50/50, “My dish, your dish, my dish, your dish,” that this argument will not happen to you. That you will never feel overburdened. Sheryl Sandberg wrote that book. It’s called “Lean In.” Or the conservatives of the world will tell you that if you just embrace your lane, your role as wife and mother, and “Make Him a Sandwich,” (that’s the actual title of Candace Owens’ book) that some version of this argument will not happen to you. That it will be all, “Wedded bliss.”

But this is a lie. You will argue. Because you’re fallible. You’re human. You’re selfish. And sometimes you or your partner will not feel seen or appreciated. And no matter how much you both try, you will never be able to fully understand everything that the other goes through in a day. When it comes to the most important work we do on this Earth: Nobody will fully see it. And no coach or counseling session or book will change that. There will be whole parts of your life that are super important and also totally invisible.

And this is when it helps to have some kind of spiritual practice or perspective. As David Foster Wallace wrote in his famous commencement speech, “Be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths.” The only choice you get in life is what you worship. In how you see things.

Because there is no card or bath bomb for almost dying in childbirth, for being so sleep deprived that you hallucinate, for working 100-hour weeks, for bailing water out of the flooding basement. Most of the most important work you do will be known only to you and to your higher power.

And made up Hallmark holidays do not replace the work of learning to love yourself. As the old commandment goes, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” You have to tell yourself, “You’re doing a good job.” Even when that feels cringe, especially when that feels cringe. And, for me, it also helps me to know that I am also loved by something bigger than myself.

So, if you are having a shitty Mother’s Day, or birthday, or anniversary that was supposed to be all kisses and cards and breakfast in bed, and wasn’t, because you’re taking care of your dying mom, or your husband is deployed, or you are just tired. You are not alone. You are in the majority. And it doesn’t mean that you suck, or that your family sucks. They’re just not god.

I know it sounds stupid, in a post-secular age, to slip into a pew on a weekday for ten minutes, or lock yourself in the bathroom, or go for a rock climb, in order to let God love you, but it’s not.

Because sometimes you will throw a nice birthday party for your kid and he will burst into tears. And sometimes your husband will buy you the exact plant you wanted and you will not feel grateful. Learning how to love requires a lot of letting go. As Thomas Merton writes, “The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” Damn.

I grew up Catholic, so my surrendering or letting go might sound different than yours. It might sound like, “Jesus, I surrender myself to you.” Or it might sound like the Elizabeth Gilbert thing of asking, “Unconditional love, what would you have me know?” And then actually listening for the answer like a dork. But the point is that you get to stop expecting other people to be something they can never be, and you get to laugh at yourself when you slip up for the 1000th time.

It may sound silly to go into your bathroom and say to the air, “Unconditional love, what would you have me know?” But it also sounds silly to be mad at yourself and other people for being predictably human. For not performing appreciation on command.

My friend Cassie is a hospice nurse, and she thinks that at the end of our lives we will see all the ways in which our lives mattered, all the lives we touched without even knowing it, something like the gift Clarence gives George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life. I don’t know if that’s capital-T true, but I do know that there’s value in trying to look at things from that god’s eye perspective. Because if you do you will see that everyone in your household is trying to be kinder than is necessary. And that is pretty magic. You’re both magic, that’s what I am trying to say.