Happy Mother’s Day

Mothers do their best Mother Happy Mother's Day mothersHappy Mother’s Day (Even If You Have Mixed Feelings About It)

Like a lot of people, I have mixed emotions about Mother’s Day. First, I don’t have a warm and fuzzy relationship with my mother or any of my now-deceased grandmothers. My mother was never my “soft, safe place to land.” Also, I spent most of my adult life desperately wishing to be a mother, and it nearly didn’t happen. (After we had completely given up, after eight years of marriage and at the age of forty-one, I became pregnant. Before that, I had been referred to as “barren” which really stung.)

I LOVE being a mother and not only is it more than I dreamed it could be, it is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, as I am sure all parents feel. Not only do I get to be the love of someone’s life, if even for a short time, but I felt like I got my parents back too. I had walked a mile in their shoes and had some insights into what they were going through. I also enjoy them through my son who loves spending time with them.

As  a Mother or Father, We Do the Best We Can

I was having a cuddly little talk with my seven-year-old son today about parents. I said that everyone at any given point in time is doing the best they know how. I said, so that now when I look back and what I thought were shortcomings by the people in charge of taking care me, now I realize how much they were actually struggling.

Wow! What an insight! That insight makes it not only easier to forgive my parents, but also myself, and everyone else for that matter.

I have been told by people that the root emotion behind fibromyalgia is unforgiveness. I don’t know if I believe that, or even if root emotions contribute to disease at all. But what I do know is forgiveness, and particularly self-forgiveness is the doorway to inner peace. And peace helps health immeasurably.


If you read popular writing about health and well-being, it is said that stress is the number one contributor to ill health. Do you know what stress is? It is just our outlook on what is happening to and around us. We can change our thoughts, change our outlook and then, have less stress, and more peace.

So my wish for Mother’s Day is for everyone, everywhere, to find the peace in your heart you so richly deserve.

With Love and Joy!

Leah