For the Motherless, and the Motherless Mothers, on Mother's Day
This is for the ones who don't buy cards anymore. Who scroll past the pastel posts and brunch photos with a quiet ache in their chest. Who wanted to be loved like the Hallmark movies promised -- but got silence, cruelty, or conditions instead.
This is for the daughters with living mothers who feel like ghosts. Or worse -- like landmines. For the ones who have spent years unlearning the idea that love must hurt, that motherhood means martyrdom, that softness is weakness.
This is for the motherless mothers -- the ones who became what they never received. Who break the cycle daily. Who tuck their kids in with gentleness they were never given. Who cry behind closed doors because no one ever taught them how to do this, and they're doing it anyway.
You are not ungrateful. You are not broken. You are not wrong for grieving someone still alive.
Today, I see you. And I say: Happy Mother's Day to the ones who had to mother themselves. To the ones who became the safe place they never had. To the ones still healing, still rising, still reparenting the child inside.
