By Tara Noone, MSW
My relationship to Mother’s Day has shifted substantially over the years. It didn’t mean a great deal to me until life surprised me with fertility struggles. Once it became clear that achieving parenthood was going to be an emotionally and physically draining obstacle course, I began to think of my first Mother’s Day as the finish line—hazy and indistinct in the distance—certain, I thought, to deliver to me that sense of having “arrived.”
Until I crossed that finish line, Mothers’ Day was an occasion for hibernation. I didn’t want to see happy families walking around. I didn’t want to see strollers or drowsily content women rubbing swollen bellies. Heaven protect the infertile woman who forgets the date and goes to brunch on Mother’s Day! I can tell you from experience that servers will wish all women of a certain age a happy Mother’s Day, whether they are moms or not. Frankly, that is a moment when polite inclusion sucks. For me, Mother’s Day manufactured obligation and felt like a cosmic statement on what I could not achieve.
Though I put a lot of effort into maintaining hope and a good attitude during my adoption wait, this Hallmark holiday shook loose my confidence that I would ever become a mother. I came to disdain and revere the holiday in equal measure.
And then my daughter was placed with us. I switched teams. I would like to say that my first Mother’s Day was the triumphant (yet pastel-colored and softly-lit) public event in which the entire world could see my exalted state of competent motherhood. Perhaps it was, but I can’t say—I was too exhausted to remember. Only days before I was so savagely tired that I’d taken a shower with my clothes on. THAT seemed a more authentic marker of motherhood.
Since then, I actually have had some of those iconic moments that I so badly wanted and felt so elusive: being solemnly presented with a stunning macaroni necklace and the card hand-written with blocky and backwards first letters. There was the exceptional key chain made with chubby 3-year-old fingers that I cherished and cried over when it broke.
And moments I could not have imagined: I have learned to share this holiday with my daughter’s birth mother. We talk to her and send a card. My daughter speaks of her first mom on Mother’s Day, and I think of her persistently throughout. I remember having moments early on when I felt a pang, so wanting to be the “only” mom. Now I feel peace and love and confidence about being one of my daughter’s two mothers, and I can’t quite say how that came about, perhaps the passage of time, plus intention and contact. What I know for sure is that my own motherhood is predicated on someone else’s. And I love her for it. And I love that our daughter loves us both. And I want to celebrate her birth mom. That is a turn of events I could not have predicted.
Mother’s Day now is largely sweet, not so charged, and about the right size for me. The only hitch is that I experience a vaguely traitorous feeling about celebrating my good fortune when I think of all the women who are still waiting to be mothers. On the second Sunday in May, I always spend some time thinking about the women who are waiting for adoption, those who struggle with infertility, and those who have experienced pregnancy loss. Every mother I know who had a challenging journey to motherhood thinks of the women still waiting. That was not obvious to me when Mother’s Day was a distant finish line, but now I feel I am in the cheering section with so many others, ready to wave new moms across, holding faith that so many more will make it if they can just endure the home stretch.
Tara Noone is Adoption Connection’s Director of Adoptive Parent Services. Tara built her family through open adoption with the help of Adoption Connection in 2008. A strong advocate for open adoption, Tara is excited to work formally with the adoption agency to help adoptive families and birth families build community together around adopted children.
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