Happy Mother's Day

Mother's Day bears some difficult feelings for me this year.  Perhaps this year more than most because it's during a time of anticipation and adjustments and frustration.  Maybe it is because I've settled into the mom-groove, yet Farrah is too young to acknowledge it.  I did, however, receive some awesome Mother's Day crafts and gift (the cutest single purple and white flower in a decorated pot with butterflies on the side with wings made of Farrah's fingerprints) from Farrah through the daycare, and let me just say - I may never, ever be able to express the amount of gratitude and appreciation I feel when receiving something made by my child to me after all the times I watched my stepchildren make thing after thing for their mother and father, and it was so dear and special, and I had only wished each time that those things were made with me in mind.



The truth is, Kaden and Kylie taught me how to be a mother.  Without knowing it and without it happening so naturally as it does for moms, I became a mother to them through the years.  They never called me mom, but they do now for Farrah's sake, and sometimes I wish feelings could be seen, because it really means something special deep inside that I know they will never know.  I've said so many prayers for them, I have many hopes for them, I've watched them learn and grow, and I've laid in bed countless nights with them weighing on my mind.  I've hurt for them and I've been so proud of them.  I've laughed with them and worried about them.  They are molded into my life, and they are mine.  They may not my biological children and I am not their birth mother, but they are my stepchildren and I am their stepmom.

Although, no matter how much my heart feels about them and the fact that I learned motherhood from them, Mother's Day always comes as a reminder that I am not their "real" mom by the fact that they will always spend that day with their mother, as they should.  With the holiday this year falling on our weekend, it feels even more of a tear as they will be taken away from our limited time with them to celebrate a holiday that I wish I was celebrating with them, because they are two-thirds of our clan, over half of what makes me a mom on Mother's Day and every day. 

This year I actually had to stop for a moment and remind myself to be thankful for what I do have.  I have two great stepchildren, who have always allowed me to be the stepmom in their lives, and a little daughter who officially gave me the title "Mom" that I've felt deserving of for so long.  I am finally recognized as a mom, I am called a mom, and I feel like a mom.  I get the things made for me.  There is now an aspect of my mothering where I don't have to suppress my natural opinions and thoughts in order to not overstep my boundaries.  I have information provided to me about my child.  I get a final say, alongside her father, of course.  Maybe it's still a little surreal to me.  It is, in fact, only my second Mother's Day that I have a child with me to celebrate on Mother's Day.

I am thankful for Kaden and for Kylie.  I am thankful that I get to be a mom to them in our home and in their hearts.  I am glad that I can tell them to trim their toenails or pick up their dirty socks.  I am glad they share stories with me and give me hugs.  Being a stepmother has honestly been one of the hardest things in my entire life, but I'm thankful I have Kaden and Kylie to be the ones I get to know and love through it.  I wish there was a Step Mother's Day.



I am thankful for Farrah for blessing me with feelings I didn't understand were possible.  I believe there is a different word we should be using for our children rather than love because I love Farrah way differently and deeper and more real than I love chocolate and soda and coffee and summertime and babies and Christmas...  I am thankful I get to be in the "mom club" now.

I am thankful for my Mother-In-Law who has always treated me with the utmost respect, and who has always made me feel welcomed and loved and appreciated.  I am thankful for her wisdom and patience and all of her mothering experience and stories.  And I am thankful for the grandmother she is, to Farrah and to Kaden and Kylie.  She loves them, and all of her grandchildren, with such a full and open heart and happiness.

I am thankful for my own mother, who I know hurt through tough times raising us, and who felt pain when we were sad or hurt or confused.  I know she worried and wished for different or better or perfect things for us, and I know she wanted to protect us from all bad and scary and big and unknown and unsafe.  I know she always put us first, or sometimes even only.  I know, without a doubt, how much I am loved by her.  And that mother's love, the "I'm not going anywhere" love, ahava, is what I will give to my children, because of her.

Happy Mother's Day to new mothers who are holding their little ones thanking God for someone to call their own, to mothers going through divorce who are feeling the pain of being torn from your children, to mothers who have lost their babies and miss them every single day, to mothers of teenagers who feel they are losing touch with a child who once needed nobody but you, to mothers of stepchildren who have to say goodbye on a day that you feel is about you, to mothers who are welcoming new children as their children marry someone they love, to mothers who are adjusting to an empty nest, to mothers of pets who know what it's like to wake up way before your alarm and clean up messes that aren't yours and feed mouths who are unable to thank you and yet you love their stinkin' face to the ends of this earth, and to every woman who considers herself a mother in one form or another.