The Expression Hub

“Only a mother who loses a child can know the depths of grief.”

Anonymous

Its the month of May, a month in which we will be celebrating the spirit of motherhood in all forms. Being a mother is supposed to be such a great feeling after all it is supposed to be an experience which is supposed to be life changing for the woman who is married for some years and then experiences a new phase or a chapter in her life. When asked to describe the feeling of being a mother, a lot of us might have ended up hearing this, “its a feeling which cannot be described but should only be experienced”. Maybe that might be true after all the feeling of raising someone in your stomach for nine months and enduring it all for that soul might have some significance. I can comment on this in the near future but not right now :p Right now, I am in a very happy space being content on the idea of radiating love on myself and working on to being a highly independent woman and want to focus entirely on that.

But there are a lot of times when being a mother can be difficult or super-challenging. There might also be times when you might want to experience the feeling of being one but you cannot do so due to some or the other reasons. And we humans are a ball of emotions. So, just imagine the situation where you would want to experience something wonderful but are not able to. Heartbreaking isn’t it? After all we do have the tendency to compare our lives with others as human beings even though we are aware of its impact on our mental health. But who doesn’t love the feeling of being validated once in a while?

Some women embrace the feeling of being a mother naturally. But there are some mothers who feel the journey is super difficult and taxing. After all being a mother means letting go of your needs a lot of times and prioritizing the needs of your children first. Then be it as simple as feeding your baby on time to changing diapers on time to maybe attending your children’s events. Also, there are some who find the journey difficult as they might have been bereaved of their motherhood due to some reasons. Some reasons might include infertility, stress, weight issues or maybe even something due to called SIDS which stands for Sudden Infant Syndrome.

Today is the first Sunday of May and is celebrated as the International Bereaved Mother’s Day. Grief as an emotion cannot be celebrated especially if it is related to something special like motherhood. But life is such that there are supposed to be difficult moments . Moments which we need to endure even if we do not wish to. This day tries to acknowledge and bring to the surface the invisible pain a grieving mother faces. The journey of being a mother can be super challenging. But what is more challenging is the pain of child loss whose grief lingers over a long period of time and might be difficult to overcome. Nothing can replace a loss but maybe by tapping into our emotions of compassion and empathy we can help give strength to a grieving parent. This is a day when the grieving parents want that their child should never be forgotten by the realms of time. They just want their child to be remembered and acknowledged. So, let us reach out to a grieving mother and let her recount her best times she had with her child. Motherhood is supposed to be a beautiful experience. But it is high time that we do let allow grief to be a medium of expression and be a safe compassionate space for people especially mothers to grieve.