Mother’s Day became painful for Sarah Portal after her mother died when she was 22. Later, she felt the pain of waiting for children via adoption. Now Sarah is a mother, she describes both the pain and the joys of the day.
Lebanese Poet, Khalil Gibran wrote on the relationship between joy and sorrow that “the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” He goes on to write beautifully about how joy and pain are inseparable and that while the well of sorrow is the new space in which we can contain joy, it is also because we have known great joy that we feel our sorrow so bitterly
Mother’s Day. A beautiful day that celebrates the very origin of life, the vessel through which we are all brought into the world. The first heart beat we ever know. The first voice we ever hear. The first love we ever receive. And it is for this reason that Mother’s Day can be one of the hardest days for so many people.
For at some point in every single person’s life, we are separated sometimes fatally from either she who brought us forth or the one whom we carried.
For at some point in every single person’s life, we are separated sometimes fatally from either she who brought us forth or the one whom we carried. Even in the most natural ending to a beautiful life, we feel the pain of losing the one who has walked beside us our whole lives.
I lost my mother when I was twenty-two years old. She was my best friend and loved every second of mothering. I felt her loss like the breaking of my bones. And suddenly Mother’s Day which had been one of my favourite celebrations, became my worst day, as I was reminded every year that I no longer had a mother. But as I healed from the initial acute pain, I realised the reason I felt such great pain was because I had once known such great joy. And I came to recognise the pain as thankfulness not loss. And Mother’s Day became a day of gratitude not grief.
And as each Mother’s Day passed, I felt the ache of disappointment.
Many years later my husband and I excitedly registered to adopt children unsure if in a week or six months we’d be parents. But due to bureaucracy it was three and a half years of waiting. And as each Mother’s Day passed, I felt the ache of disappointment.
We converted the baby room back into a guest room and carried on with our lives in silent hope, eyes stinging with unfulfilled longing. The thing that helped me endure the sorrow where my joy once lay, both with the loss of my mother and the unfulfilled longing to be a mother, was my friends.
People who sent me messages acknowledging the loss and the heartache. It didn’t change my reality but being seen by them gave me strength to move through the pain.
Now, years later, I have a three-year-old and a one-year-old and Mother’s Day is again one of my favourite celebrations, for my children are my most treasured loves.
And yet, for them it may become a day of mixed emotions. Possibly joy, for the life we have shared, but potentially sorrow, as they grieve the mother they have lost through the events that precedes any child needing to be adopted.
Read more on Mother’s Day
‘This Mother’s Day, don’t forget you’re a daughter of God too’
So I enter into this special day with utter joy and thankfulness for some of the most precious relationships in my life - my children and my mother. But I also go with gentleness, acknowledging my loss, my children’s losses and the many friends for whom this day is hard: infertility, loss, unanswered prayer, broken families. On this day, may we celebrate our joy, share our strength with those who suffer and lean into the hope that our sorrow will one day enable us to be filled with a great joy. There is room to celebrate and room to grieve.
Happy Mothers Day!
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