Why I Hate Mother’s Day

My oldest memory of Mother’s Day was a girl at school crying and all of us patting her back. We were kids, we didn’t even know what grief was except when we didn’t get the toy we asked for. In her case, she didn’t get the mom.

What started as sobbing while the school chorus was singing and praising a mother’s warm hug, years later turned into an expressionless face and ball-fisted hands, then ended with a permission to skip school every year on that day. I’d hate to imagine for a second how lonely and left out she felt.

Today, she has grown into an amazing mother and each year she asks all of us to spend Mother’s Day with her at an orphanage with children who shared her agony. To be honest, I never thought I could handle spending time around so much sorrow, yet according to everyone who does it, these kids soar with happiness with all the positive attention and love they get.

Social media now makes it impossible not to get a piece of everyone’s soul and that has left me with two wake up calls. First, I started noticing how many people share memories of their lost mothers, writing heart-wrenching notes and statuses describing how lost they are without them. Second, you get to watch, on a daily basis, horrific footage of child abuse. If it happens at private schools, imagine how bad it can be at an orphanage.

Try to spend part of your day with orphans. It doesn’t have to be an orphanage, just show love to someone who lost a parent. Take their mind off of it just for a couple of hours and please tone it down with the Mother’s Day posts.

Each mom deserves the recognition she gets on Facebook and Twitter, but have mercy on your friends who have lost their moms or those who have lost their children and show your love privately. No doubt, a status would put a smile on your mother’s face, but it could also breaks someone’s heart.

WE SAID THIS: Don’t miss Dealing with the Loss of a Loved One.