Here's to any woman who are not mother's.

I told my 6 year old daughter yesterday when we went out to eat, that I had waited my whole life for her, as I have many times in the past. I tell her this when she says things to me like “you hate me, don’t you” or “you wish I wasn’t your daughter, don’t you?” I don’t know what else to tell her but the truth…I waited my whole life for her. I was 35 when I finally got the little girl that I wanted to badly. I got her and I’ve never forgotten it.

And every mother’s day as I celebrate mother’s day and am joyful that I get to celebrate a mother’s day…I also think of all the mother’s days that I didn’t get to celebrate. I have a lot of empathy and sympathy  for all those woman out there who are left feeling a loss or a void on this day because they are not yet mothers. Whether it’s their choice or not.  

I remember how the focus was on mothers (as probably it well should be as it IS mother’s day) but it also brought up a painful void that I was NOT a mother. Yet. Maybe never. I could not tell the future and I could not tell if I was going to be the one thing that I knew I was meant to be. The time clock was ticking and my life had so much to get figured out that I didn’t know if it was able to get the mess untangled in time for it to all work out in time. Recovery at a time when motherhood should have been flourishing was nerve- wracking.  Anxiety was constant and my life was unsure. All my friends were already married, most starting families and my life was going backwards as I was divorced and heading towards a new decade of age that put a cap on limits a woman’s life. I had serious choices to make and those were selfless and hard painful, difficult decisions that were life changing and as bad as the anxiety got, I had to push forward through the fear and the pain that being a mother may not happen.

I’ve never forgotten those years of every Mother’s Day that passed when I was not yet a Mother. Here’s to all those women who are not mother’s.