Firstly, Happy Mother’s Day to all those who honor and celebrate this day!

I say this with a bitter irony because I have not celebrated this holiday with my birth mother in many years.

Holidays that celebrate parents can be challenging for those who are LGBTQ+ and I think there has been a slight increase in understanding this notion with more conversations being shared. Furthermore, statistics collected about the worst experiences our LGBTQ+ youth face--abuse, homelessness--deepen the understanding that families are not always the safest for us to be around when our queerness is what they forcefully reject.

But, honestly, that isn’t my story.

My mother and I haven’t spoken in nearly eighteen years. By choice. My choice. My queerness wasn't a factor at all.

And, at the time and in the first fifteen years of living with decision, this was the best decision and helped me build a new foundation of who I am without the concern of her potential harm and grift.

But in the last couple of years, and especially in the last several months, I feel some internal struggle on whether I would find any fulfillment or closure if I were to reach out to her. Included in that struggle is whether I want or need whatever I may or may not find.

Several months ago, I left Indiana for a road trip to gain clarity on my business. I drove to the Southwest. But as soon as I crossed the Mississippi River, memories of my mother strode into my mind as if they were invited. I didn’t fight them off. I just let them float and followed them along where they led. I can’t say the hurt from these memories had diminished since, nor can I say I have any newfound understanding of what she went through herself, but it felt like a shift of grief that I’ve been carrying for so long.

I’ve spent a large part of my life in mourning for a mother who is still living and also for a mother I never really had.

But the shift in grief is in part due to my learning of her failing health. That window for potential closure is itself closing. It may already even be closed after the stroke she had a year ago.

She’s only 62.

I’m 42.

I can't claim to know what all these musings mean or add up to. I know that our stories matter and we learn so much from each other’s stories if we open ourselves up to listening.

Even though my story of my mother left me feeling parentless and unparented, that doesn’t mean I can’t share in the joy of my friends who are mothers or delight in those have been chosen mothers to me and others.

In some small measure, I feel like a community mother despite never wanting to be a mother.

Everyone’s story of mothers, mothering, or motherhood is different and we have a vast library within ourselves to listen to and learn from.

I hope today we listen to these stories. I hope we become better listeners and hold more collective space for people who wish to share their tales of motherhood, including the painful ones.

I hope we do better for mothers as a society.

And I'll keep musing over my own story and remain open to how I may do better for my own.