For me, Mother’s Day has been tender for a long time.

I remember working in a small retail shop in Portland 12 years ago while customers smiled and asked if I was a mom myself. Even then, in my early 30s, I felt the ache in my heart answering no.

Nature is quietly doing what it does. Changing, growing, holding.

Side by side on the trail, instead of face to face in a room, the women share their stories of loss. There’s space to pause, to cry, to breathe. Somehow, being outside makes it all feel a little more possible to carry.

Beauty and heartbreak.
Hope and exhaustion.
Moments of joy sitting right next to anger, grief, or uncertainty.

It's all true at the same time.

If you're also having big feelings, you're not wrong and it's not your fault that you feel how you feel.

And I notice that it gets to be really hard, if not impossible, to go about our daily lives and pretend like everything is fine.

Because it's not.

This time of year makes it especially easy to over-do and over-give. To keep pushing, often in service of others.

Liana Naima’s words land deeply for me: “I have never met an over-giver that isn’t starving for their own attention.”

What if this moment, right now, is an invitation to give yourself some of that attention?

Two days before the event, I realized what was really happening.

I was trying to make the story perfect because part of me felt guilty.
I hadn’t seen Tim one last time before he died, and I didn’t speak at his Celebration of Life.
Maybe if I told the story flawlessly, it would make up for that.
Maybe it would make my sadness smaller.