Happy Mother’s Day?

Mother’s Day feels a little less happy in the age of COVID-19

Photo of my family in our masks. The new normal.

This is my 7th Mother’s Day as a mother. For some reason this year the celebration feels less deserved than previous years. This pandemic has brought with it an extra dose of “mommy guilt.”

Like moms around the world, I’ve been granted more time with my little love at home. The extra time we always ask for that our working lives don’t always permit. While that has been wonderful, the added responsibility of working from home, becoming my child’s teacher and staying in tune with the other physical and emotional needs of my family has been a challenge. I am a person that regularly needs alone time in order to function. It’s my time to think, create or just veg. That alone time helps curb my stress and regulate my mental health. With everything we are experiencing I’m craving that alone time more than usual. And maybe abusing it?

As a result, my child’s needs have occasionally taken a back seat to my daily struggle to make it through each day in our so-called “new normal.”

Hello Mommy Guilt. Have a seat and stay for a while.

The rational and intellectual side of my mind tell me that I am doing the best that I can, given the circumstances. But it’s just not strong enough to overpower Mommy Guilt. Mommy Guilt, while emotional and sometimes irrational, can appeal to my intellect as well. For example, I know for a fact that my child is just as affected by this pandemic as I am — and potentially with more long-term effects. Her world is upside down and confusing. While she’s ecstatic mommy and daddy are around more — she can’t manage to keep our attention that is divided between her, our work, her schooling, and staying sane among many other things. That is undoubtedly taking a toll on her and her mental health. And according to the mental health experts around the country, this can be potentially traumatic for most children. That scares me. It also makes me incredibly sad, because it’s out of my control.

As someone that has experienced childhood trauma and has seen its effects on the adult lives of many of my loved ones — I would never want this for my daughter. In fact, while pregnant, it’s the one thing my partner and I discussed most. We wanted to break cycles of dysfunction in our families. The cycles that caused trauma for us as children. While we are in no way perfect parents or people, we have given our child so much love and space in her short life — that is the foundation for a person to thrive. She is so loved and cherished. And she knows it. We don’t keep it a secret for her to guess and ponder from our actions in her adulthood. No tactics to harden her. We tell and show her every day that she is loved. We’ve avoided repeating the troubled cycles that plagued the generations of parents before us. Well, COVID-19 said “Hey, hold my beer.”

So, Mother’s Day feels a little less celebratory for me this year. But as I’ve been writing this, I’ve come to terms with the fact that all I can do is continue to love and support my child as much as I can. What most mothers instinctively do. Is my love strong enough to get her through the pandemic and all of its many side effects?