I woke up this morning tired. Not the kind of tired that sleep fixes. The kind that lives in your chest.
Mother’s Day has always been complicated for me. My mother wasn’t there not in the ways that counted. Our relationship is still distant today. And yet here I am, making sure she has a roof over her head, food, stability. Not because it was given to me. But because I chose to be different.

I spent years yearning to be loved by her the way a child deserves to be loved. Some days that yearning still shows up. Today is one of those days.
But here’s what I’ve learned that you can love someone and still grieve what they couldn’t give you. Both are true.

I didn’t have a blueprint for motherhood. No one showed me what it looked like to pour into your children without conditions. I built it from scratch. From instinct. From the version of love I always wished someone had shown me.
And I’m proud of that. I really am.
But I’m also tired. Tired in a way that I don’t think gets talked about enough and the exhaustion of mothering when you never really got to just be someone’s child. When you had to grow up fast. When you figured it out alone.

If you’re reading this and Mother’s Day feels heavy for you too,whether it’s a complicated relationship with your own mother, the weight of showing up for your children while running on empty, or just the quiet grief of what you never had. I want you to know you’re not alone.
You don’t have to perform happiness today.
You’re allowed to feel it all.

And if you broke the cycle even while exhausted, even while healing, that is everything. Don’t let anyone minimize that. 🤍

Happy Mother’s Day to every woman doing it anyway.