I am a mom. I love moms (even the scary ones) and I love celebrating the crap out of ourselves come Mother’s Day. But every year around this holiday, the old panic creeps up my legs into my sucky little ovaries and I look around wild-eyed at the waiting women, the hurting ones, my infertile sisters jacked up on hormone drugs praying fervent words of longing to a God they aren’t sure is listening anymore.
Every year I’m for them.
I’ve never recovered from the inner cringe that happens every time Mother’s Day rolls around. When Mother’s Day is the worst day of the year…for so many years…it leaves a mark.
So to the women who are moms in their hearts but not in their homes, the ones with empty wombs feeling the ominous toll of monthly not-yets, I hold you in my heart this week. Every week I think of you and ache with you, but this week in particular the wounds feel fresh.
If you’ve experienced infertility and now have children by birth or paperwork running around your house, you understand. This week we hug our kids a little tighter. They give us side eyes as we caress their sweaty heads and breathe sappy things into their ears.
Sometimes infertility feels forever ago, and then someone announces the Stick Turned Blue and I’m right back in the emotions, the longing, the feeling left out. It was another lifetime and it was yesterday. A part of me will always be that woman with her face pressed up against the glass looking in on what she can’t have.
I’m thrilled doing-the-running-man happy dance to get to blog about motherhood and also devastated that my very name, Mom, brings pain to a woman who isn’t in this place.
And so there’s the tension. Of wild partying in the Mommy Club and intense grieving over the ones experiencing the pain that I remember too well. And I can’t and won’t resolve the tension, but instead acknowledge them both. I will woo-hoo and weep for all the women, the whole gamut of motherhood.
This Sunday, while woo-hooing the precious moms I adore, I intercede for the barren with prayers to a God I don’t understand. I exchange knowing gazes and nod my head with respect. The wound is healed, but the scar is gargantuan.
I light a candle for the waiting ones.
