Happy Day After Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day to Women Who Mother.

Happy Day After Mother’s Day to my whole community doing the hard job of orphan care.  I feel like today is a much better day to address this day than yesterday.  Yesterday, I wanted a nap, solitude, and adult beverages.  Today, I can see yesterday clearly.

I saw dozens of memes on Facebook on Saturday, admonishing everyone that Mother’s Day is hard for lots of people, and reminding us to be cognizant of that.  I spent a lot of time thinking about why seeing so many of those posts bothered me so much, and I realized it is because I don’t want to be robbed of the joy of celebrating all the women I know who mother others.  I believe we can parent other people’s children, whether formally or informally, and I want to continue to have a day to praise those women.  I do recognize that the day may generate pain for many (like all holidays), but what if we focused all our Hallmark efforts for this one celebrating women who mother?

Thirteen years ago, when we initially embarked on the journey to do this thing, I assumed that this day would be a hard one for the children we would be parenting.  But as my girlfriend with a 5-year-old adopted child who came from a heroin trauma situation mentioned on Saturday, I wasn’t planning on it also making the day traumatic for me.  For years I celebrated my little biological kids and posed them in pictures with lace socks and all of us smiling for Mother’s Day.  I am not like all the other Instagram moms whose family photos are prefect – we were a hot mess even with just two biological kids, so I appreciate a photo with all of us IN it.  That counts as winning.

Once we waded into the deep waters of orphan care and its super messy stories, we found that even that low standard can be hard to meet.  Several sweet friends of mine found me in the church lobby yesterday, and with eyes that say, “YOU must LOVE Mother’s Day, being a mom to so many kids!” told me, “Happy Mother’s Day!”  I smiled at each and said thank you.  One kind woman waited for me to reply.  I said,

“Mother’s Day is a very hard day for kids who come from foster care.  It is often a day of loss for them.  Today was no different.  At breakfast, my eleven-year-old told me, ‘I don’t want to celebrate Mother’s Day today’.”

Her eyes filled with tears as a paradigm shifted. 

“I had no idea.  I thought they would be so happy to now have a mom who loved them.  I didn’t realize they felt loss about their old parents.”

“Me too,” I compassionately told her, “before I did this job.  I have learned a lot.”

As we hugged and left each other in the lobby, I realized again how important it is for us as parents to advocate and educate for these kiddos.  Before I explain the back story like that one, my eleven-year-old is seen as a total brat for saying that to his momma on Mother’s Day.  After I help her know his story and pain, she is filled with love and compassion for him.

Sitting in ANOTHER IEP meeting last week, I met with an amazing team of educators preparing to take my son into their building next year.  Several have worked with our family before, and my trust level was already high when I entered the room.  I did what I do and feel strongly that we all should do, and told them enough of his story so they could see what has made him the way that he is.  It is more than telling them what works and what doesn’t.  It’s helping them to understand his trauma and how that impacts him, his learning, his peers, our family and their classroom teacher.   In ten years of sitting in these meetings on this side of the table, I have not yet encountered an educator who didn’t love my sons and go above and beyond for them planning out their school experiences after they learn about them.  Not having these discussions is like going to the doctor and asking him to treat my son without having any background medical records.  I’ve done that at the beginning of foster placements, and it is complete lunacy and frustration for all of us and is seldom productive for the child until we get a better picture of the past.

There is a line where we can share out too much personal information, but I am not talking about sharing for the sake of violating privacy.  I’m talking about sharing on a “need to know” basis to make their lives and days and learning better.   Sharing to generate empathy and understanding.  I’m talking about trusting the educators, doctors and providers whom I choose to work with as part of my care team for the sake of all. 

As my day came to a close yesterday, two of the teens that I informally mother stopped by to drop off little tokens of love.  My eighteen-year-old “son” wrote me a note that I will carry with me in my heart always,

“Thank you for never running out of love or time for me or any of your kids.”

Day made.

Let’s celebrate the Women Who Mother around us every day.

As King Lemuel’s mother taught him about a what a good woman was in Proverbs 31:

Strength and dignity are her clothing,
    and she laughs at the time to come.
²⁶ She opens her mouth with wisdom,
    and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
²⁷ She looks well to the ways of her household
    and does not eat the bread of idleness.
²⁸ Her children rise up and call her blessed;
    her husband also, and he praises her:
²⁹ “Many women have done excellently,
    but you surpass them all.”
³⁰ Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
    but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
³¹ Give her of the fruit of her hands,
    and let her works praise her in the gates.