# Mothers day... thinking of you all...



## emcee (Apr 3, 2005)

Today is mothers day here in the UK and its not lost on me the impact this day can have on all of us, no matter where we are in our journeys.

Today I would like to celebrate all of us on here, although many of us may not have achieved motherhood status we have, each and every one of us have made a difference in the lives of our fellow posters on here, and that in itself is a magnificent acheivement.

Sending out massive   to you all here, and those of you out there who look in on us for support when you need it, and hoping that today is gentle to you, no matter where you are or what life has flung at you... I am thinking of each and every one of you.

Holding you all very close, and thanking the gifts my lovely mum gave to me to enable me to be the sort of person I am today. Missing you mum... 

With love, 
Emcee xxx


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## Laine (Mar 23, 2002)

Dear Emcee,

What a lovely, heartfelt post, thanks  

Thinking of everyone also  

Laine xx


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## Maggie Mae (Mar 2, 2006)

Thanks E, feeling like there's definitely something missing from my arms and my house today, but trying to let the grief wash around me and not overwhelm me....MM xxx


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## ruby k (Jun 2, 2004)

Dear emcee, thanks for this very thoughful post.
Didn't realise you don't have your mum around anymore - sending you a gentle  
xxx


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## karen j (May 19, 2004)

Dear All

I havent posted for a while, but when I woke up this morning the first ones I thought of where you lot.
YOU LOVELY LADIES.  

I feel that we've all been through alot,when ever I've needed a chat or a moan you've all been there for me.
So although I dont post as much, please remember you'll always be in my heart and thoughts.

Love Karenj
xxxxxxxxxxx


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## pipkin (Jan 14, 2005)

Emcee, if your mum was anything like you she must have been a gem and I'm sorry you havn't got her around for Mother's Day - Mum's are never far away though ...  

Love to everyone else today xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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## Ermey (Aug 17, 2004)

Emcee sweetie, so sorry you no longer have your mum. I know she will be watching you and with you somehow.

Would like to echo that I thought of you all on Sunday, and particularly as I remembered Jq's lovely message a while back about how everyone on here has been very nurturing and 'mothering' to each other.

So, a little belatedly, THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH for 'mothering' me through the last year. i couldn't have got here (one year on) without you all.

Big kisses.
Ermey xxxxxxxx


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## emmag (Mar 11, 2007)

Mothers Day can be so hard. I really didn't want to think about it, and had 3 false starts before I actually managed to buy my mum a mothers day card!

On the day, DH and I went to a local cafe for breakfast & the papers (a ritual!).  While DH went to get the papers, I ordered, and there was a couple in front of me with children, and the waitress gave the woman a little chocolate egg. The husband said "Do I get one?!" and the waitress said "no. You're not a mother". I'm not sure if my face showed my mortification, but I ordered and she just handed me an egg without saying anything. I don't know if she felt sorry for me or just assumed I had children or what. I felt pretty uncomfortable anyway!

On the upside, my 2 adorable cats bought me a (totally unexpected) mothers day card, thanking me for being a great cat mum.


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## pink panther (May 4, 2005)

Emcee,
what a lovely post.
Sending you all massive  at such a hard time of year.

ppxx


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## jq (Nov 14, 2006)

Hello,

Thank you Emcee for starting this lovely thread. You have done your Mum proud.

I was ill all wekend and so not around here on Sunday but my thoughts were with you as well as with my Mum. My own day was made special by a lovely text from my dear young friend, Ben, who said "Happy Mother's Day to my chosen surrogate Mother!" Now that was a text I welcomed (!) I am very lucky to have a friend like Ben.

I salute the mothering spirit in the women who post here, and thank you all for sharing it.

Love to you all,

Jq xxx


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## irisheyes (Feb 2, 2005)

So sad that yir mum isnt with you Emcee. There was a really good article in the YOU magazine(Mail on Sunday) on Mothers Day celebrating those people who were all mothers in differn ways. It was a good article.Hope some of you got to read it. Let me know and i can summarise what it said on here.


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## emmag (Mar 11, 2007)

I didn't see the article, but I'd love to know what it said, of you don't mind giving a little synopsis!


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## emcee (Apr 3, 2005)

Same as Irisheyes, if you wouldn't mind telling us about it that would be great...

Love 
Emcee x


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## pipkin (Jan 14, 2005)

Hi girls

IrishEyes - I read the article in the YOU magazine on Sunday and enjoyed the read.  I hope you don't mind, I just did a search and they have all the articles from the YOU magazine online so I have pasted it in here for everyone to read.  It was a good article .... enjoy

Thanks very much to Irisheyes for highlighting this one for everyone  

Pipkin x


YOU magazineMother's Day is for all women
By ELIZABETH WILSON - More by this author »

There’s no need to feel left out on Mother’s Day just because you don’t have children. The qualities we traditionally associate with motherhood – love, selflessness, wisdom – are things all women can use for the benefit of others and their own fulfilment

If you don’t have children, Mother’s Day must be a teensy bit difficult.

Amidst the flowers and cards, even the most saint-like woman would find it hard not to feel overlooked if she’s not a mother herself. Which is a trifle hard on the non-mothers on two counts.

For one, those qualities that we most strongly associate with motherhood – nurturing, loving, wise – are not the monopoly of mothers.

Secondly, Mother’s day, historically, was about honouring all women, not just mothers, and to a certain extent, it’s been ‘hijacked’.

In Britain, the tradition of Mothering Sunday started back in the 16th Century when on the fourth Sunday in Lent, people travelled home to worship in their ‘mother church’, their parish of origin. (It was very often the only time in the year a family would be reunited.)

An alternative name was Rose Sunday because it became a custom for all the women in the church (not just the mothers) to be presented with a posy of flowers.

So there is a precedent for my invitation this Mother’s Day to get back to our roots.

Let’s remember the women who - mothers or not - are loaded with the qualities best associated with motherhood. And remember also what those qualities can achieve.

I think of my friend Amanda, who now in her 40s, did not have children but who still pours out her creativity in support of others.

She decided that she would pour her nurturing energies into converting a once-derelict cottage in Devon, into a home that nourishes you from the moment you plonk your bag down by the Rayburn.

It’s a home where the brokenhearted remember life is worth living; the indecisive can sort out their priorities; the fraught can find calm views from every window.

‘I had a very particular feeling that I wanted to evoke, of safety and peace,’ she says. ‘I wanted very much for my cottage to be a place that said to my friends when they were going through hard times that ‘things will be fine, life is good’, even when I couldn’t say that to them because they were feeling too raw.’

Another woman whom I think of as especially nurturing is Joanna.

Now a widow, and childless, she is a wonderful listener and a careful observer. You can rely on Joanna to notice when you are just a little more brittle than usual, a little more fraught.

Several times she has surprised me with a quiet sentence which sums up a dilemma in my life that had been lurking on the fringes of my consciousness without me even realising it.

Joanna really listens to what you’re saying and even more to what you’re not saying, and her deep empathy emphasises just what a gift that is.

The deep attention she gives to those around her is made concrete in the beautiful gift boxes she makes for friends’ birthdays – full of reminders of their year, personal treats, and objects only they might delight in.

There lurks somewhere this idea that childless women are somehow selfish. In my experience, as Amanda and Joanna bear witness, it’s often the opposite; they pour out love without necessarily expecting anything in return.

‘But it’s such a joy when you are made to feel loved and loveable especially when you didn’t look for it,’ says YOU’s health editor, Sarah Stacey. Sarah should know. Unremittingly kind, she has been adopted by several young friends as their fairy godmother because as one wrote to her ‘because of what you are, not because of the presents’.

Sarah would have liked children, but it was not to be. Instead of allowing her loss to make her bitter, she has chosen instead to reach out her hand to others whenever she can.

‘I have been taught a lot about how to love and be loved by my four beloved horses. When they know they are loved by you, they will come and talk but then when they’ve had enough, they’ll turn away and stroll off. They have their own life. You let them go.’

Women like Sarah have mastered that most difficult of balancing acts – the one that many mothers, myself included, struggle with – how to love unconditionally without expectation, how to avoid putting the ‘s’ into mother and ending up with ‘smother’.

Since the explosion in IVF research, and the consequent flood of stories of women desperate to have children, there has been I think even less public understanding of the group of women who choose not to have them.

But is it not time that we honoured those women, too, for what they contribute?

Oprah Winfrey gave birth at 14 but her son died in infancy and she chose to have no more children.

She has since said that she believes that she did not have children because she was meant to earn enough money to pour tens of millions of dollars into building schools in South Africa for young girls in the townships.

‘Perhaps this is why I didn’t have children,’ she says, ‘so that I could make this possible.’

Psychotherapist and agony aunt, Susan Quilliam, also made the decision not to have children.

‘How I describe it is that I never felt I had a vocation for motherhood but I did have a strong vocation for writing self help books and being an agony aunt, for helping people. I had a strong feeling of ‘this is what I’m supposed to do, this is what I’m good at’.

There is something of a grassroots movement worldwide developing where all women – mothers or not – are being urged to access those qualities we most associated with motherhood, and well, change the world.

Jacqueline Plumez, psychologist and author of Mother Power: Discover the Difference that Women Have Made All Over the World, makes the case elegantly in her book that when women unleash their ‘maternal’ qualities – protectiveness, peacemaking, emotionalism, fairness – they have brought down corrupt governments, reversed toxic damage to the environment and seen off gangs destroying their communities.

Her book raises the question whether women - mothers or not - might not find great satisfaction in using their innate mothering qualities to fight for causes they believe in, to become heroes in their communities.

Love, constancy, selflessness, courage, wisdom and spooky intuition are the very qualities women possess, but they are also the qualities of superheroes and they can make a huge difference.

Let’s turn Mother’s Day into a day when we honour all women who show motherly qualities – let’s make it inclusive. And that would allow another touching custom to be brought back into fashion.

During research into the origins of Mother’s Day, I discovered that in the US in the 19th Century, women whose mothers were still living wore pink flowers; those whose mothers were dead, white.

I had never thought of how poignant Mother’s Day must be to those women whose mothers have passed on, how excluded they must feel.

Why should their mothers’ love and support not be honoured, too, just as much as those of us lucky enough still to have our mums with us?

So this Mother’s Day, as I munch through my burnt toast and open my handmade cards, I’m going to mentally raise a glass to those women who embody all the best of motherhood – whether they’re mothers or not, still with us or not.

Lovely as it is, to be a mother on Mother’s Day, I think there’s a place for we adult women to reclaim Mothering Sunday for all the women who ‘mother’ us beautifully – whether or not they ever gave birth.

All those friends who support us with their love, understanding, wisdom, a hug and a perhaps a glass of champagne, when we need it the most.

How to bring out your inner mother

• Love. When someone else is going through a hard time, listen if they want to talk. Try to do this without giving advice and telling them everything will be alright, or otherwise trying to make them feel better. The best listeners say little but that can bring the greatest comfort.

• Nurture. Do you know a child that could do with a bit of extra tlc? Could you spend time with that child, nurturing him or her? The presence of a loving adult in their childhood from an adult other than a parent made all the difference. Children thrive on adult attention. Whether or not the child has loving parents, you offer another space for them to grow and flourish.

• Communicate. Remember that how women cope with stress is by ‘tending and befriending’. When you are feeling lonely and down, don’t isolate yourself, reach out and befriend another. Find a community or form one. Start a book group, join an organisation for like-minded women.

• Look after yourself. Susan Quilliam points out that it helps you have better relationships. ‘Mother or not, it’s a mistake to pour attention and care on others without letting people do the same for you. Otherwise, it can become unequal and controlling and ultimately it leads to resentment. To draw people to you, you have to allow intimacy with them, which means learning to receive as well as give.


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## Maggie Mae (Mar 2, 2006)

Pipkin, 

Thank you so much for posting this....

My husband's cousin became a mother today, having fallen pregnant in the first month of her married life. I have been quietly preparing myself for the announcement,  and it wasn't unbearable, but it has been with me all day, until I reached a point while making dinner when a well of sheer anger rose up. 'Why me?' and 'Can I have a day off?' were the words that came out....

Unusually for me, I switched off the computer and got my gardening books out, and managed to forget for a couple of hours that I am me. Feeling better I've switched it back on, and this article has warmed my heart up....

Where would we be without this place?


Love to all of you, 

MM xxxx


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## emcee (Apr 3, 2005)

ladies, thanks for mentioning this and thanks darling Pip-pip for posting it...

In truth mothers day is a double whammy for me as I don't have my own lovely mum and I'm never going to be a mum. Its amazing and refreshing and wonderful from my point of view that this article recognises that fact!

MM - I know what you mean, I've often been heard ranting similar phrases to myself too - I hope the gardening helped hon.


Much love to all
Emcee xxx


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## irisheyes (Feb 2, 2005)

Hey pipkin-that was a much quicker way to get the info here,thanx . I didnt realise that YOU did that.It's strange how a few yeras ago i would have completely passed over an article like this but now i know that they have quite a few articles re this subject-usually well written too.


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## Bandicoot (Mar 8, 2007)

What a fabulous article, thanks Pipkin and IrishEyes.

Love... Nurture... Communicate... all of those things I have found in abundance here. The nurturing spirit could not be more alive and I am so thankful I have found it, found you.  

Emcee, what an amazingly giving person you are to think of all of us by starting this thread in the first place, when, as you say, it is a double whammy for you. Your mummy would be truly proud of her lovely daughter for nurturing all of us, always.  

MM, I hope the gardening books helped; I know how difficult 'those' announcements are. I find decapitating weeds to be amazingly theraputic!  

EmmaG, how thoughtful of your lovely little cats to get you a card. I must have words with my dogs as they didn't bother...

Jq, what a wonderful text to have received, and all the more precious because your young friend Ben sent that to you because he truly wanted to, not because he 'officially' had to - unlike all those kids who are begrudgingly 'made' to do the right thing. It really gave me a warm glow!

B xxx


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## jomac (Oct 27, 2006)

Dear pip, thanks for posting this truly wonderful article which was lovely food for thought - appreciated because you can't get YOU magazine in NZ
One of the things I've struggled with is that my own Mum didn't do a great job - in fact I always felt like HER mother from a very young child. I wanted a child so that I could do the mothering thing myself because I've never experienced receiving it and because of that I knew how important it was. Sadly it's never to be. I always wander if my career choice was because I felt the need to nurture. Life is hard sometimes and it's good to remember that there are other ways I can be a mother.

lots love Joanne


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## emcee (Apr 3, 2005)

Jo.... sending you massive   because you are amazing and wonderful and we are so very glad to have your input here...

Love, 
Emcee x


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## zipppy (Feb 7, 2006)

id just like to say i miss my mum everyday, its only been 2 years since she died, im sorry for never makng her a nanny. love u mum xxx


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