How to Get Through Mother’s Day When It’s Hard
Mother’s Day is coming, and for many people it brings a quiet, private weight that sits alongside all the public messaging about celebration, gratitude, and connection. If your experience of this day doesn’t hit the Hallmark version – if you’ve lost your mum, lost a child, never knew your mother, or are carrying a relationship that’s complicated or painful – it can feel like the volume has been turned up on everything that’s missing. Rather than just acknowledging that, I want to offer something more useful: a few ways to prepare for the day, move through it, and come out the other side.
Why Mother’s Day Can Be So Hard: Understanding Grief, Loss, and Complex Emotions
One of the more destabilising aspects of days like this is not just the sadness, but the mix of emotions that can show up alongside it. You might notice dread in the lead-up, which research shows is often harder than the day itself. You might feel anger at the commercialisation, or envy when confronted with other people’s intact relationships. There can be longing for what you don’t have, or a kind of numbness if it’s been a long time. For many, especially in complicated relationships, there’s often a blend of love, relief, and ambivalence all at once. None of this is unusual, and taking a moment to acknowledge the feeling can remove some of their sting.
How to Prepare for Mother’s Day When You’re Grieving or Struggling
One of the most useful things you can do is decide in advance how you want to approach the day. That might mean limiting your exposure – staying off social media, declining invitations, or keeping things simple. Or it might mean doing the opposite and choosing not to be alone. Neither approach is better; do what will support you. Think about where you want to be. For some people, that’s somewhere meaningful; for others, it’s somewhere that carries no associations at all. Planning something that absorbs your attention can make a real difference, not as a way of dismissing what you’re feeling, but as a way of giving your mind somewhere else to rest. And if you can, identify at least one person who knows this day might be hard, so you’re not carrying it entirely on your own.
What to Do on Mother’s Day Itself
As the day unfolds, it helps to let your emotional responses run through you rather than trying to shut them down. Suppressing them doesn’t make them disappear. Some people find it useful to create a small personal ritual – something that acknowledges the significance of the day without needing to explain it to anyone else. That could be as simple as lighting a candle, looking at photos, writing something privately, or going somewhere that holds meaning. Acknowledging your loss, even just to yourself, can also ease the sense of invisibility. And while it might sound basic, moving your body – even just a walk outside – can shift emotional intensity in ways that thinking alone often can’t. Unlike alcohol which tends to do the opposite! If you find yourself having moments of feeling okay, or even enjoying something, don’t feel bad - it doesn’t take anything away from what you’ve lost, nor dishonour your pain - it’s your body’s natural craving for relief.
Coping with Guilt and Regret on Mother’s Day
Guilt and regret often surface strongly on days like this, partly because we measure ourselves – implicitly or explicitly – against an ideal that most real relationships never meet. It can be useful to ask whether what you’re feeling guilty about reflects something real, or whether it’s the gap between real life and an imagined, unrealistic version of how things “should” have been. In many cases, it’s the latter. We are all operating with the resources, awareness, and capacity we have at the time, and that was true of you, and it was likely true of the people in your life as well.
How to Support Someone Who Finds Mother’s Day Difficult
You don’t need to fix anything or find the perfect words. A simple acknowledgement is often what matters most: letting them know you’re aware the day might be difficult and that you’re thinking of them.
Getting Through Mother’s Day When It Hurts: A Final Perspective
What makes Mother’s Day hard isn’t just the loss itself, but the contrast between your reality and what the day is supposed to represent. You’re not required to meet that expectation. Getting through the day in a way that works for you is enough.
If today feels more worse than you expected, you might find my other post - Mother’s Day is Complicated blog - helpful too.
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