Mother's Day Feelings

Mother's Day is this Sunday.  So, as usual, I have spent parts of this week listening to my kiddos talk about what they want to get their mother.  I've helped them pick things out at the store and make things with their hands to give her.  I've given them money to buy the gifts and materials so they could make these gifts of love for their mother. 

I keep thinking that if I were a better person it wouldn't annoy me so much. I wouldn't resent it a bit inside, it wouldn't hurt my feelings a little. But I also recognize that those feelings are understandable and human. I have decided that it is okay to have those feelings, just not okay to acting poorly because of those feelings.  My value to them is not measured by Mother's Day gifts but by far more important things.  Besides, I do NOT want them to feel disloyal to me for giving gifts to their mom, nor do I want to set up a competition that just emphasizes the divided loyalties they already feel and that I talked about in an earlier post [see May 2].  

But, I think it is unrealistic to expect ourselves not to feel twinges on days like Mother's Day and Father's Day etc.  Divorced parents face some of the same twinges, children of divorce face some of the same divided loyalties.  I've talked to enough foster, kinship, adoptive, and divorced parents to know I am not alone in these twinges.  I am more fortunate than some in that I have my first family who love me dearly and both say it and show it often.  

I think the kind of take-away thought is not just that everyone wants to be loved and valued. We know deep down that we ARE loved and ARE [or in the case of little ones will be] appreciated. The thing I think we miss is being told that we are loved. We miss seeing or hearing that we are appreciated.  And that we share with people far beyond the world of foster care.  Every parent of a teen or adolescent has those same moments.  It's okay.  We aren't bad for feeling those things.  More important, we know inside that whether we ever hear it or not, whether we ever see it or not, whether we ever feel it or not...even regardless of whether THEY ever see it or say it or feel it.....we are helping, we are protecting, we are raising, we are loving these children.   With or without the title or the Hallmark card....We are mothering them.