Actively Mothering

I'm Guilty

A fellow still mother recently shared on our support group about an hurtful exchange that took place at the school she works at. As the staff was discussing children’s activities for this past Mother’s Day, one of her coworker assessed that only “actively mothering” women should be celebrated on Mother’s Day. In this woman’s opinion, that left out mothers of children that had passed away. Now we can (and we did) discuss how mean-spirited some people are and how heartbreaking the working place can be as a still mother and all the grief education we still have to do. But behind the anger and the hurt, I think there’s something to take from those words, and this idea of “actively mothering”.

I personally have been lucky enough to spend 11 months here on earth with my daughter, most of that time spent at the hospital as she was fighting cancer. I can easily picture what someone would mean by “actively mothering” a living baby, especially a sick one who need constant supervision. In order to care for my daughter when she was alive, I went sleep-deprived for months, I lived in a state of terror therapists compare to war situations, I signed away every bit of my privacy, I gave up my home and a good chunk of my mental and physical health. And it was all a damn privilege.

Because how do we “actively mother” a child that is not physically here ? We think about our babies all the time. We speak about them. Some of us write about them, some of us sing to them, some of us pray for them. We go to therapy. We take part in support groups. We fund research and we raise awareness. We kiss their pictures. We sleep with their soft toy. We get tattoos of them or jewelry for them, so we literally carry them everywhere.

Is that the mothering I planned to do ? No. Is that the mothering I wanted to do ? No. Wouldn’t I do anything to switch back to regular mothering, to change a diaper, to rock her to sleep, to move back in this tiny hospital room and spend my life there ? Of course i would, if it was an option. But from now on, this is probably all the mothering I’ll do in my life. Now do i find it in any way easier or “less active” than mothering a living child ? Quite the contrary.

So mamas. It is not for others to decide whether we are or aren’t mothers, whether or not we should be celebrated. They really have no idea. But we do. We see you. We see you hurting and loving and actively mothering a child you can’t hold in your arms. We see you doing the hardest thing in the world, and doing it every single day. So happy Mother’s Day, mamas. You deserve it.

Chloë Sóleyjarmóðir
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Chloë is 27, and a high school teacher. But before anything else, she's Soley's mom. Soley was diagnosed at age 3 months with an aggressive kind of brain cancer called ATRT. She showed an amazing fight through months of hospital and chemotherapy, but treatment was ineffective and she died at 11 months. Soley is her only baby, and remains her whole world. You can read about her story on her blog, aboutholland.wordpress.com

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