03/16/2026
Just had to share.
"Mother’s Day arrives softly for some and with terrible weight for others. For many, it is a day of flowers, warm embraces, familiar voices, and the comfort of knowing exactly who to call. Yet for so many others, this day opens a quiet place that never truly closes. It brings back the sound of a mother’s laugh that no longer fills a room, the touch of hands that once soothed every fear, and the steady presence that made the world feel less harsh. Today is not only for those who wake to cards and kind words. It is also for those who wake to silence, to memory, to absence, and to the deep ache of knowing there is no number to ring, no door to knock on, no mother waiting on the other side of the day.
To Ona, and to everyone carrying love and sorrow together, this message is for you. It is for those whose mothers are still here, and for those who speak to them now only in their thoughts. It is for those who were cherished, and for those who grew up reaching for tenderness that never came. It is for the people who learned too early how cold the world can be without a mother to stand between them and its cruelty. It is for those sleeping in shelters, on strangers’ sofas, in borrowed rooms, in cars, beneath the open sky, and in places where Mother’s Day passes unnoticed by everyone except the one quietly enduring it. Your pain is not made smaller because the world keeps moving. Your emptiness is no less real because others are celebrating.
Some people spend this day smiling for everyone else while carrying a grief so old and so deep it has settled into their bones. They remember their mother in fragments that return without warning: the way she tied back her hair, the shape of her handwriting, the scent that clung to her coat, the look in her eyes when she was tired but still trying to give comfort. Memory can be gentle, but it can also be merciless. It can place before you, with perfect clarity, everything that once made you feel safe, then leave you standing in the hard truth that none of it can be touched again. There is a particular sorrow in remembering love so vividly while being unable to reach it. On this day especially, memory can feel almost as heavy as grief itself.
And then there are those whose sorrow comes not only from what they have lost, but from what they never had. For some, Mother’s Day does not stir warm remembrance but a quieter, colder question that has followed them for years: what might life have been if care had been given freely, if comfort had been real, if a mother’s love had been something they could trust rather than imagine? Some people have had to become their own shelter, their own reassurance, their own source of tenderness, because no mother was there to gather them in when life was hard. The world rarely knows what it costs to grow up without that first refuge. It rarely sees how much strength is required simply to continue when the one bond that should have offered safety was missing, distant, or gone too soon.
For those whose mothers are in heaven, Mother’s Day can feel almost unbearable in its beauty and its cruelty. The sky seems too wide, the distance too final. You may find yourself speaking to her in whispers, in prayers, in the privacy of your own thoughts, telling her what has changed, what still hurts, what you wish she had seen. You may carry her in the way you speak, the way you care for others, the habits you did not realise were hers until she was no longer here. Love does not disappear with death; if anything, it becomes more piercing, because it remains while the person does not. And so this day becomes an act of quiet endurance: carrying devotion in one hand and sorrow in the other, trying to honour both without collapsing beneath either.
To those with no mother to celebrate, no grave to visit, no photograph to hold, and no clear place to lay their grief, this day can feel especially cruel. There is a loneliness in having no shared language for your pain, no familiar story that others readily understand. While the world speaks of mothers with certainty and warmth, you may sit in silence that has followed you for most of your life. You may know what it is to watch families gather while you remain outside that circle, looking in from a distance that never seems to close. Please know this: your worth has never depended on whether someone stayed, whether someone chose you, or whether someone gave you the care you deserved. The absence of a mother’s love may have marked your life deeply, but it does not define the value of your life.
There is also something sacred in the people who have carried on despite this emptiness. The ones who kept going when there was no one to guide them. The ones who had to teach themselves how to survive, how to trust, how to offer kindness while knowing very little of it themselves. The ones who have built lives out of little more than endurance, memory, and the faint hope that tenderness might still exist somewhere beyond what they have known. On a day like this, their strength should not be mistaken for ease. To rise, to breathe through it, to continue while carrying such private sorrow is no small thing. It is a quiet kind of courage, often unseen, often unpraised, yet immense all the same.
So today, as Mother’s Day is marked in homes, in churches, in hospitals, in care homes, on pavements, in hostels, in prison cells, in quiet bedrooms, and beneath cold morning skies, let there be room for every kind of truth this day holds. Let there be room for gratitude, and also for grief. For celebration, and also for the unbearable weight of remembrance. Let there be room for those who miss their mothers with an ache that time has not softened, and for those who still long for a mother they never truly had. Let there be room for tears that are hidden, for names spoken softly, for memories that arrive like shadows, and for the painful dignity of simply making it through the day.
To Ona, and to all, may this Mother’s Day hold a place for love in all its forms, even when it comes wrapped in sorrow. May the mothers who are gone be remembered with tenderness that does not fade. May those who never knew a mother’s care be met, somehow, with gentleness that reaches them where words often cannot. May those walking through this day alone feel, if only for a moment, that they have not been forgotten. And may every person carrying this quiet ache know that their tears are not weakness, their memories are not a burden, and their longing is not something to be ashamed of. For some, Mother’s Day is a celebration. For others, it is survival. Both truths belong here, and both deserve to be held with dignity, compassion, and love. "Happy Mother's Day to all you beautiful mothers and fathers, the ones who no longer have their companion."
-Steve De'lano Garcia
