Dreading Mother's Day?

To Anyone Dreading Mothering Sunday: This Is for You ❤️

Mother’s Day is everywhere. It’s in the shop windows filled with pastel greeting cards, in the social media posts about love and gratitude, in the well-meaning conversations that assume a mother is someone to be cherished, celebrated, and adored.

But for many, this day is not soft and warm—it’s heavy, complicated, and raw.

If you’ve been hurt, abandoned, dismissed, or estranged from your mother, Mothering Sunday doesn’t feel like a time to celebrate. It feels like a reminder. A reminder of what you lost, or what you never had. A reminder of the mother who couldn’t love you the way you needed. The mother who hurt you, neglected you, or left you carrying wounds so deep they still shape the way you move through the world.

For you, this day may bring a quiet ache or a sharp, unbearable grief. Maybe you find yourself scrolling past posts that don’t apply to you, sitting with questions that will never be answered:

Why wasn’t I enough?
Did she ever love me?
Why does this still hurt, even after all this time?

Perhaps you had to set boundaries to survive, walking away from a relationship that cost you too much. Maybe you’re still in contact, still navigating a connection that is fraught with tension, unspoken wounds, and unmet needs.

And then there’s the guilt—because society tells us that no matter what, a mother is to be honored. That we should reach out. That we should forgive. That "she did the best she could."

But what if her best was never enough to keep you safe?

What if healing meant choosing distance?

What if love, in its truest form, is the absence of harm?

For those of you feeling unseen, unheard, and deeply alone today—I see you. I see the strength it has taken to protect yourself, to unlearn the lies you were told about your worth. I see the quiet grief you carry, the longing for a mother who never truly arrived for you, the exhaustion of trying to fill that space with logic, with understanding, with something—anything—that will finally make it make sense.

You do not have to celebrate today.
You do not have to perform love where love was not given to you.
You do not have to justify your boundaries, your choices, or your pain.

What you do deserve is kindness—to yourself, to your story, to the younger you who just wanted to be loved the way every child should be.

If today feels like too much, let it be just another Sunday.
If you need space, take it.
If you need to grieve, grieve.
If you need to be held in understanding, know that you are not alone.

Mothering Sunday is not just about the mothers who gave birth to us—it is also about re-mothering ourselves, about finding the love, safety, and care we needed elsewhere. In friendships. In partners. In our own self-compassion. In the quiet knowing that we are worthy of love, even if the person who was supposed to show it first never did.

However you spend today, let it be in a way that honours you.

Reach out if you want to talk. You don't have to do this alone.

Take gentle care,
Louise

Wildfire Counselling & Therapy
www.wildfirecounsellingtherapy.co.uk