Celebrating our Mothers

​Mother’s Day 2015 was a very difficult time for me, having just lost a child 3 months prior. Family and friends were very important, as they helped me feel included on this significant day. They came together with me through the acknowledgement of the loss and the acknowledgement of myself as a mother with tender care and support.​

Janet and Eleanor. March 2015.

Mother’s Day 2016 I was pregnant again and the holiday was a bit easier, though I still felt the bittersweet tug towards 2015.

​​And now this Mother’s Day approaching feels completely different from the previous two. I know the inner landscape of a mother’s love for her children firsthand. I know the pain of loss and the joy of love and life. I am learning how each day is a new day. A new day in which to have mistakes and successes, and to keep learning and growing. My loss of Eleanor still carries pain and one never fully completes grieving, yet the pain has softened and most often when her presence arises in my memory or awareness, I feel a sweetness, tenderness and joy.

Janet and Eliza. July 2016.

​On this significant day, I also think of my own mother and my new found gratitude, which began in my 1st pregnancy. My gratitude is in the work it took in raising 4 children, while also working full time.  She gave birth to us and raised us. And we are here because she carried us and brought us into the world. Thank-you mom!

3 Generations. September 2016.

​It seems that Mother’s day is marketed to be a "happy day", but maybe that is the material marketing world at work to entice us to spend money. This approach is very limiting. What about a more soulful approach to mother’s day? In bringing this soulful approach, it could be a mother’s day where we also honor the mothers who have lost, who never became, as well as the ones who have been fortunate. We can also honor those who have lost their mother, never met their mother or feel far away from their mother. This more wholesome approach is important to me, especially as I see us and honor us not only as individuals, but as a group as a whole.
 
What makes one a mother? A quick, personal definition of a mother is a person who gives love, who carries creative potential and births new ideas. I imagine in tribe-based cultures that the women had ritual and ceremony-- all women of the tribe would gather and come together finding ways to honor each other and the significant thresholds that one crosses throughout life. What if this day isn’t about a woman’s accomplishments or success in raising children, and is really about women, and we all have the potential to be a mother in many different ways. Men too can also ‘mother’ and we find ways to honor one’s inner balance of masculine and feminine.
 
In conclusion, I honor each woman reading this today, and witness the ways that you bring your mothering into this world. I also recognize how each of us came from a mother and I have gratitude for our mothers. We are all connected by this thread.

May we help each other remember our strengths and gifts as women!

​<3

written by Janet Wepner

Women's Hero's Journey. August 2015.