How can we honor Mother's Day?

12 May 2024 Daily Meditation

Like the true affections of a great mother, our awareness is naturally loving, unconditionally compassionate, and nonjudgmental. Like a great mother, it stays with us always, no matter what happens in our lives. ~Zoe Logan Morris, “A Meditation for Mother’s Day”

Mother’s Day never passes without me remembering one of the first exercises given to me by my sponsor on Mother’s day, as I was still harboring anger and resentment towards my parents, in early recovery:

“Send a card to you Mother, please, and thank her for something you are grateful she gave you as a mother.” I was seething. I was used to sending a card, but something humorous, detached and unemotional. I told my sponsor I couldn’t do it. “Surely there must be something, one thing, you are grateful for…” was her reply. I wracked my brain. Finally I chose a blank card with a picture of a deer and her fawn on the outside. Inside I wrote, “Thank you for birthing me. Without yours and Dad’s genes, I would not have turned out to be the person I would have become today.”

There I thought, snarkily, that’s as close as I can come to something genuine and honest, without dishonoring my own true feelings that these parents had let me down. I mailed off the card with a summary Happy Mother’s Day, glad to be done with it.

What a suprise when the phone rang on Mother’s Day and it was my parents on the phone. With tears in her voice, my mother thanked me. “That’s the most beautiful thing you could have said to us!” she exclaimed. I found myself choking up as well. The dam of years of hurt feelings was bursting. I didn’t know quite what to do.

This started the change in our relationship. I can’t say it healed all the hurts. There was a lot of work to do, via the steps of the 12 step program. I was quite surprised that it began the turn of the tide, especially since I’d been so resistant. That’s the important thing. Often we are so resistant to change, the very thing that is needed for healing.

In my active addiction and certainly even before, I built walls and reinforced them with the cement of resistance. It was impossible for compassion, love or any new healing to break through. It took the healing hand of my sponsor to forge a path through, find a crack in my armor, to let the light in.

This Mother’s Day, where is the room for the Light to get through?

Most of us have mothers who have wanted to be loving, kind and compassionate. They have also probably fallen short. We are all human so we do. Instead of focusing on the pitfalls, can we focus on the one good thing?

Someone has to be the one to start the healing. Let it be you.