226: On This Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day is right around the corner. I want to hold space for you. If you are a grieving mom with no other children, a grieving mother with other children, a grieving mother who lost her child before they were born, whatever it is, wherever you are in your grief, maybe you’re a mom or somebody who wants to be a mom who’s still waiting for fertility, wherever you are, this day can be very hard. It brings up a lot of emotions.
Many moms start dreading this day many weeks in advance. This day has so much meaning attached to it and so many emotions surrounding it. I’ve thought about this episode so much, and there are so many ways I wanted to come to it. There are so many ways I could try to support or encourage you this time. I’m not sure what the best way is to share all that I want to share, but I hope that if you take one thing away from this episode, it’s this: you are the mother of all mothers, and you are carrying the greatest weight that any mom can carry, and I’m holding space for you. I want to encourage you and support you in being the best mother that you can possibly be.
This is actually something that I’ve put in some of my tapping meditations inside of Grieving Moms Haven and one mother in particular has shared that it has felt so nice to be reminded that she is the best mother for her child, that she is an amazing mother to her living children if she has them, and to her child who has died.
What does it mean to be a mother? What is your vision and your picture for yourself as a mother? We will all come to our own conclusions and what works for us in our lives, and it’s so important to acknowledge what this role is for you in your family.
One thing I know is that many of us as moms just become so much. Our identity as a mother and taking care of our children is that we forget who we are in the process. What does motherhood mean to you after child loss? Like if your identity was a mom and then your child dies - you’re a mother to that child, it can change and shift to - how do you mother them now? What does motherhood mean? This definition of motherhood and what it means can change dramatically after child loss.
Mother’s Day for me, because I have other children, has lots of meaning for them and for me as their mother as well. I am Aria’s mom, I am every one of my kids’ mom, and I want to be present for them, and be grateful that I get to be their mother too.
I also want to acknowledge all the pain that mothers go through. In general, we take the risk when we love someone, that we will be hurt. We take the risk when we have a baby and we love that baby so much, and their time might end before ours. We put everything on the line for our children. We pour everything into them. What does it mean to love another child? After your child died? Is it scary to open yourself up to that love again, with the possibility of dying again before you?
We all take the risk when we love someone so deeply, that risk of the pain of saying goodbye to them. None of us knows when our last moments will be. We are not guaranteed a life with our children. We are not guaranteed the life that we dream about. And yet we all walk around believing that we are. I say this and then laugh cause we do walk around believing something that’s a lie. We are not guaranteed anything. We walk around believing that we shouldn’t be burying our children. I get it. It feels wrong. It doesn’t feel like parents are supposed to bury their children, but we have. It’s real. There’s nothing I can do to change it, and when we’re living life acting like it shouldn’t be happening when it is, we are fighting with what is reality. When we say that shouldn’t happen, it causes immense suffering because it did happen. It happened to you. It happened to me. And it’s something that each of us has to live with every day.
I’m not at all saying that you have to be okay with it, that you should be feeling a certain way. Or just come on, pick yourself up because that’s our reality. That’s not at all what I’m saying. I just want to offer that when you keep cycling through those thoughts of “shoulds” and “supposed to” and shouldn’t then it’s a cycle of suffering because you can't change what is.
What is, is it’s sad and it is painful that they are gone. It’s excruciating and sad to not be able to hold them. It’s sad to be a mother that has had to bury her child. That feels so unfair. All of the grief that comes is real and valid. All of it.
As a grieving mother, I want to remind you to LIVE especially on Mother’s Day. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in your pain. To cycle through thoughts over and over. To just be trying to survive every moment of every day. I see you. I know that you are just trying to survive every moment. I’ve been there and I know what it’s like. I know how draining and exhausting it is. I know, absolutely know, that you are doing your best.
This is a difficult conversation for me to bring up because I never want to come or to be heard from a place of shaming or judging because that’s not my purpose, that’s not my intent and that’s not what I’m trying to do. I am not shaming. I am not judging. Cause I know how absolutely difficult it is. The last thing I want you to do is to start beating yourself up and thinking you are doing it all wrong.
If you are feeling that you are getting wrapped up in your pain, we all can get wrapped up in our pain. We all fall down, and it can be so hard to get back up. Every single one of us cannot do this alone. How do we learn to get up after such a difficult fall?
I have talked with many mothers who have had other children. There are so many different circumstances but one that comes up often is - “it’s not like I love my child who died any more than my other children, it’s not that I love them more but their death just consumes every moment of my life, and I feel like I have nothing left to give my other kids. I want to show up for them, I want to be there for them. But the energy and the pain are just consuming to me so that I don’t have anything left for them.”.
It’s a sad thing if when your child died, you stop existing as well. What do your other children think? Are they worthy of your love? Are they worthy of you existing for them? Even if you don’t have other children, are you willing to just exist the rest of your life, because the pain is too much?
I’ve had moms that I’m working with tell me that their living children have said to them something like: “Mom, I’m still here, aren’t you happy about that? Like do I matter? I’m still here. Can you live for me?”.
The pain of child loss and death is incredible. And there might be a time when you just have to exist. That’s just kind of how it is. Something that we have to look at and learn how to accept and be okay with that. There is a period of limbo, and the trauma and suffering will for sure have an effect on everyone. Everyone in your life is affected by it. But with many things we have to get back up, we have to stand up and live again. You can do it. I believe that so deeply. I have found it in my own life, and I’ve seen it in the moms I work with inside Grieving Moms Haven.
Here’s the thing, living and searching for a life after loss is a choice that we each have to make. Again, this choice can only come from you and only you. Nobody else can hype you up into getting help and support or processing your emotions. Nobody else can make you look for positive things. Nobody else can help you feel your emotions. I cannot make you believe it. I don’t even need to convince you, because this is a choice that you get to make for yourself. Ask yourself, do I want to learn to live again? Or am I willing to remain a shell for the rest of my life?
Living doesn’t mean forgetting, my friend. You can carry your child forward with you. You can carry grief and joy at the same time. You can remember them in your family, and talk about them with your kids. Living doesn’t mean you stop grieving or never have hard days. I’m not saying that grief has to completely go away. Or you have to be perfectly fine all the time. That’s not what I'm saying at all. It just means that you don’t exist as an empty shell. That you thrive and are able to be 100% present or not even 100%, maybe 75 or maybe 50. Which is better than zero, right? In your children’s lives being there as much as possible for you.
This episode came to me because I listened to a podcast where someone was talking about growing up with parents that gave up after her brother died. And what that meant to her as a child, she was sharing about it, and I’ve heard this so many times from people who had parents who have gone through something really challenging and then they’ve given up and the kids feel abandoned, that they don’t matter and their parents care about them. I’ve thought about this in grief as well. While it’s such an intense experience and so painful. And I truly believe we need to feel and experience our grief, I also want to encourage you to never give up. To reach, continue to reach for life after loss. To be present with your children. To do better than yesterday. To do the best you know how in every single moment, and the rest is out of your control. When I say, do the best you know how every single day, that might be the only thing you can do that day is sit on the couch and give your kid a hug. That might be that you made breakfast that morning. That might be that you got yourself out of bed. We can judge all we want of what does or the best thing you know how to do every single day. You can judge it all you want but you’re really just doing the best that you can every day.
I struggle often with not feeling like I’m doing good enough, or recognizing that I’m doing the best I can, as I always want to be doing better. So I want to offer this to you. You are doing the best you know how right now. Sometimes that has to be enough, and beating yourself up about it is not going to make you want to do better.
So you might be thinking, “Okay Megan, I don’t want to keep living this way. I didn’t choose this life. I don’t want to live this way, I despise it! I just don’t see any other option.”. I know you didn’t. I know it feels impossible. That’s why I want to offer some ideas for you, for you to reach for yourself as a mother, as a wife, and as a woman in this world.
Coming from a place of love for yourself. Giving yourself a big hug and saying, “Wow, look how much you’ve been through. Look at all the things that have happened.”. One thing I would like to encourage you to let go of is the word “should”. All the things you say to yourself that you “should” be doing. How does it feel when you think of the things you “should” be doing? What if you could replace the word “should" with the word “could”? Or if I really wanted to, “I could”. I should be doing that. When you come from a place of choice, you get to decide which things you want to do, and you are more likely to do them, rather than from should. Which is a place of force and makes you beat yourself up, a lot.
I also want to bring awareness to your thoughts.
What are the thoughts that you keep thinking that is bringing up such pain in your life?
Let me give you examples of thoughts that many of my clients have thought, and I have thought myself:
“This shouldn’t have happened”
“I should have done this or that”
“If I let go of the guilt that means I’m forgetting”
“They don’t understand”
“I can’t live through that again”
“I can’t do this”
“Life after loss is not possible”
“My life is over”
“What could I have done differently?”
“I am a horrible mother”
“I don’t deserve happiness.”
When I read those out loud, how do they make you feel? Do they give you hope that there’s life for you after loss? Do they make you feel strong and supported in your grief? What emotion comes up in your body?
You might not even know that you are thinking these thoughts. You might not even be aware that these thoughts are keeping you in a cycle of depression, suffering, and grief.
If you are not able to care for your living children and be present with them, or if you don’t have living children but want to live for your child who died. You have to learn to care for yourself. You really really do. There’s just no way around grief. There’s no way around processing the pain. There’s no way around it. You matter. You are a mother. An amazing mother. And you deserve to be taken care of. And guess what, you can decide to take care of yourself!
So, noticing your thoughts, and feeling your emotions is huge. Allowing yourself to be and process what is going on in your body. Giving yourself space to feel and process what is coming up for you. By tapping, meditation, breath work, or booking a Rapid Resolution Therapy appointment with me.
I hope on this Mother’s Day, you have people in your life who are loving you and caring for you, but remember that you also get to care for yourself. You can take the steps forward holding grief and all the pain as valid, and also reaching for joy, and being present with your living children. It’s that dichotomy of grief and joy, pain and lightness, holding all of it together. It’s all okay to be there at one time. It doesn’t have to all be a pain. You don’t have to be consumed by the pain. You hold grief and you hold joy, carrying grief and joy together. You are the mother of all mothers. You truly are.
Sending you a huge huge huge huge hug this Mother’s Day. Take care, I’ll see you next week.
Have you felt anxiety after your child died?
The racing mind, unable to sleep, waiting for the next bad thing to happen, unable to breathe, panicky kind of anxiety, whole body riddled with anxiety?
Watch my free video on anxiety and grief below!
So that you can think clearly, feel calm in your body, and live your life without the chains of anxiety.
