Mother's Day... Anyone Else Dreading It? :-(

[Bosco2153]

I know it's coming! I have two grown kids and 4 grandkids...and I know there'll be some sort of contact: phone calls, flowers maybe, a spaghetti dinner for 'all the moms' in the family etc. I'm mortified! My heart races. I want to turn my phone off and hide in a closet under a pile of laundry! But what if there was a SPIDER! I am almost nauseous with anxiety. :(

 

[Rumors]

I don't dread it. I miss my mom but I love my son wants to celebrate it. Good luck!

 

[intrasearching]

Not excited. My adoptive mother was my abuser. Yet, because of the family dynamic, I have to call her and wish her a good day. It would be even better if I sent a card... If I do neither, I receive quite the guilt trip.

 

[Loner]

You're dreading it as a mom/grandma? I can see dreading it as a son/daughter, but if you dont want to celebrate it I am sure your kids feelings won't be hurt if you just tell them to forget about it. Tell them to get you a card and you can have lower key celebrations with each of them individually sometime. Perhaps I'm missing something. My own family is not quite normal so I'm not sure if I'm just completely off base.

 

[Bosco2153]

I feel uncomfortable receiving any attention on Mother's Day. I wasn't a good daughter during my mother's Alzheimer's years, and I wasn't a good mother during my children's growing up years. I wish I would have known that I was suffering from PTSD...I wish I could have said to my mother and my children...'I'm sorry I'm not good at this, but I was abused and it messed me up...but I love you'. Instead I abandoned and ran and left them all in the shadow of my abuse and passed the pain on to my children. Even though I KNOW it...I wallow in isolation STILL.

 

[Kiki lou]

Maybe Mother's Day would be a good start to being a better mother and grandmother. Everyone makes mistakes, you were confused and scared. Tell them now, I'm sorry I was so messed up. I thinking being a good parent when suffering for PTSD is incredibly difficult but I also know my children are the reason I get out of bed everyday, I know on some days I a not the best Mom and someday I hope can try to explain all this to them. Until I just try my best. Good luck to you, I hope for you and all of us mother's that we have the best day we possibly can in whatever way that works for us

 

[Bosco2153]

Thank you all for the kind responses. Holidays are very difficult.

 

[Mayday]

I'm also not looking forward to Mother's Day. I am just feeling so many conflicted feelings about everything, and although there have been times when my relationship with my mother wasn't so bad, it's never been good, and at the moment it is at a low point. She's been passive aggressively pointing out the lack of contact lately, but I am just so unsure of my thoughts at the moment, I've just been avoiding my parents in general.

I will also be staying well away from Facebook tomorrow (which is Mother's Day here in New Zealand) as I know it will just upset me. I'm getting upset just thinking about it anyway, as I feel like such a fraud saying Happy Mother's Day, but am not yet at the point where I can not say it, and tell her exactly why. Hoping if I just text her in the morning, that she'll make do with that and not try to ring me or invite me over.

 

[Philippa]

I must be atrocious. I haven't said happy mothers day to my mother in a couple of years now. I'm not looking forward to it because it upsets me that I have no relationship with her, but I honestly don't feel like she deserves any accolades for being my mother, given that she acts like she's the child and I'm the mother whenever we do get together.

I have given her my heartfelt gratitude for the way she raised me and what a great mother she was when I was a child. Things changed pretty drastically though, and I cannot bring myself to give her credit for the way she's behaved towards me in the last 20 years, so I stopped 'doing' mothers day altogether.

She can't be bothered with me anyway, so I don't get any guilt trips from her. She treats me like I don't exist...is that something I should thank her for?

 

[quaintpapercut]

I dread the actual day as well as the lead up to it. It feels like every where I turn I'm reminded about what a mother and the corresponding relationship should be, and its a constant reminder about how my experience was nothing like that.

Your not atrocious Philippa - I'm not sure what I would be thanking my mother for either. The feelings surrounding it are so complicated. I constantly struggle with the loyalty and love I feel towards my family while trying to reconcile the treatment I received.

 

[Philippa]

I dread the actual day as well as the lead up to it. It feels like every where I turn I'm reminded about what a mother and the corresponding relationship should be, and its a constant reminder about how my experience was nothing like that.

I feel this way too. It's depressing. I hate the constant bombardment from society. Everywhere I turn I see "love your mum" and "show your mum you care" and other such banners that only serve to remind me that I am an asshole if I don't feel this way or do what the signs tell me to do.

Your not atrocious Philippa - I'm not sure what I would be thanking my mother for either. The feelings surrounding it are so complicated. I constantly struggle with the loyalty and love I feel towards my family while trying to reconcile the treatment I received.

I resent being forced to say thank you every year at the same time, when it should come from a place of honest WANTING to thank her, which could realistically be any day a person chooses to say thanks. I have said thanks to her many times, in many ways, and she still thinks I'm ungrateful. I am ungrateful, for the way she has treated me...why should I pretend otherwise?

 

[The Albatross]

I am working. My spouse is taking "one for the team" and is taking both our mother's to lunch. I am also working on my birthday.