Making over Mother’s Day

My wish: More intentionality, less performance.

I want to extend a big warm welcome to my new subscribers. Many of you found me because of a post called What I learned in a year of writing about a really unpopular topic on my other newsletter.

This is Almost Sated, where I write about that unpopular topic — what it’s like to detox from diet culture while living in a world obsessed with thinness. I am not a nutritionist or a therapist, just a 40-something woman trying to make peace with my body after years of believing my weight determined my worth. This space is for anyone who has ever felt trapped by diet culture, who is searching for body liberation, and who believes in the radical idea that all bodies are good bodies. This week, I’m taking a detour on account of Mother’s Day.

Sara Petersen

asked her followers this week how they wanted to spend Mother’s Day, and it got my wheels spinning.

When I told my 20-year-old daughter the gist of this week’s piece, she reminded me that not every woman can advocate for herself or ask for what she needs. Systemic societal and cultural forces often silence women's voices, even those who do speak up. I want to acknowledge those women and clarify this is written for the ones who can advocate for themselves and others. Finally, I'd love to hear your thoughts and alternative viewpoints, because I know there are many of them. 

Mother’s Day is complicated. It's a day that carries a lot of weight for many of us, even those who aren’t mothers. Especially as I get older (I turned 49 last week), I am less likely to follow the rest of society and more likely to question why something must be done a certain way. Performative parenting is probably at the top of my life of biggest pet peeves. I can’t stand all the theatrics that happen on social media during holidays and other major milestones.

And Mother’s Day might be the biggest performance of them all. After all, the pressure is so high for us moms to make our lives look perfect.

Earlier this week, a friend shared a viral post from a few years back about how all mothers want for Mother’s Day is to not have to plan their Mother’s Day. It said that today is the day to tell the mother in your life it’s taken care of, or she will assume that it’s on her again and spring into action to plan the whole thing.

Posts like leave me steaming. Rather than suggesting meaningful changes like setting realistic boundaries and expectations with our children, spouses and partners, instead they promote passive-aggressive venting: “Poor me! Another Mother's Day where I had to plan the whole thing.”

Most of the moms I know are otherwise empowered, badass women. They don’t have to be performers. 

We get to decide whether to take part in the planning of Mother’s Day.

If we’re not happy we had to plan it ourselves on behalf of our people, we can actually take action.

We can decide not to participate.

We can make specific requests.

We can teach our children to help others by guiding, educating, and setting expectations.

We can allow people to do things for us more than one day a year, which I think is the bigger problem.

I understand that this isn't easy or possible for everyone. There are relationships, situations, and dynamics where asking to be recognized isn’t safe. And I understand there are many of us who want to feel celebrated for just one day and we can't even have that, but many of us have more ability to make it happen than we acknowledge.

Always doing for others while struggling to ask for what we need, or refusing to allow others to do for us, is a hurdle we have to overcome.

When we ask for help in planning our Mother’s Day, we’re often talking about sharing the mental load. For better or worse, sharing the load must begin with communication.

Some of us say we want this, but we don’t want to give up control because our expectations are so impossibly high that there’s no way anyone could meet them. And, understandably, if our appreciation is only acknowledged and celebrated one day of the year, it makes sense why the stakes are enormous.

I think it’s time to have genuine conversations about what we really want.

Do you want to be celebrated for what you do? It starts with allowing yourself to be celebrated and perhaps making the request.

Do you just want to give the appearance of being celebrated? That’s something else entirely.

To me, Mother’s Day is largely just another day. The ultimate Mother’s Day is to be acknowledged and recognized for my contributions regularly, not just on one day, and not as part of this big, planned out spectacle that I can later post on Facebook and say, “It was so great … even if I had to plan it myself again.”

What do you really want this Mother’s Day? What do you wish you could have but are afraid to ask for?