Let’s be honest for a second. Not the polished, greeting-card kind of honest. The real kind. The kind where you sit down and think about your mother, and the first thing that hits you is not a memory of a birthday or a holiday, but something small. Something ridiculous. Like the way she called your name from the kitchen and somehow, in just two syllables, you could tell whether you were in trouble or whether dinner was ready. How did she do that? Nobody knows. She just did. Mums just do.
Mother’s Day comes around every year, and every year we scramble. We panic-buy flowers in the morning. We make breakfast that somehow burns even though we followed the recipe. We write cards with pens that skip and end up crossing out half the sentence. And our mothers, bless them, smile through all of it like it is the most beautiful thing they have ever seen. Because to them, it is. Because it came from us. And everything that comes from us is beautiful to them, even when it absolutely should not be.
But here is the thing nobody really talks about on Mother’s Day. The weight of it. The actual, physical, emotional, never-ending weight of being someone’s mother. We celebrate it with brunch and flowers, but what we are really celebrating is decades of invisible labour. The 3 am wake-ups nobody clapped for. The school runs in the rain. The packed lunches were made with a bad back and no sleep. The times she cried in the bathroom so nobody would see. The times she held it all together with nothing but sheer will and a strong cup of tea.
She was the first person who believed in you before you gave her any reason to. She believed in you when your school report said otherwise. She believed in you when you quit the thing you swore you would never quit. She believed in you when you came home broken, and she sat with you in the pieces and did not once say she told you so, even though she absolutely told you so. That kind of love is not normal. That kind of love is a superpower.
And let us talk about the sacrifices she never mentioned. The career she put on hold. The trip she did not take. The dress was put back on the rack because school fees were due. The dreams she quietly folded up and stored somewhere safe while she poured everything she had into yours. She never asked for a receipt. She never kept score. She just gave and gave and gave and somehow always had more to give.
So this Mother’s Day, yes, get her the flowers. Yes, make the breakfast even if it burns a little. But also just tell her. Tell her that you see her. Tell her that you know it was not always easy. Tell her that the house she built, not the one made of walls and a roof, but the one made of love and sacrifice and showing up every single day, that house is the reason you are standing. That house is you.
Call her if you are far away. Sit with her if you are close. Hold her hand a little longer than feels necessary, because one day it will feel necessary and she will not be there. Tell her she is your favourite person. Tell her she is funny, because she is. Tell her she is beautiful, because she always has been. Tell her that you are still learning how to be as brave as she is and you are not sure you will ever get there, but you are trying.
Happy Mother’s Day to every mother who made it look easy when it was not. To every mother who showed up tired and loved anyway. To every mother who is someone’s whole world and does not even know it. You are the reason. You have always been the reason. And we love you more than we know how to say, so we say it today and hope you feel all the days we forgot to say it too.
From all of us who owe you everything.
Celebrating the women who keep everything going.