The extra weight of Mother’s Day during a pandemic

The past few months have given us all a better sense of the heaviness that can settle in when uncertainty, anticipation and waiting characterize much of our days, weeks and months.

You may be, as I have been, harbouring hope that lifting restrictions will be possible so we might enjoy a semblance of the summer we were imagining in February. You might also be tempering this hope, as I am, with shifting expectations about how to make the most of a physically distant summer, knowing that’s what might be needed for the collective good.

For anyone struggling to conceive a child, the heaviness of two months gone by without moving forward as expected is all too familiar. I say this as someone who has personally known the dizzying hope and then crushing monthly realities of infertility.

The pandemic is hard. It’s even more difficult for those struggling with infertility who have been seeking the help of assisted reproductive technologies. Their dreams of a family have been temporarily halted as fertility clinics close their doors in the interest of public health.

As Mother’s Day approaches, these losses — of not yet having a child and the control of actively working toward changing that — will be amplified with invitations and expectations to join phone calls and video chats to wish mothers and mother figures a joyful day.

Although mothers and mother figures are certainly worth celebrating, we, as a society, are becoming increasingly understanding toward those for whom Mother’s Day can be tough because of grief, strained relationships and infertility. This list can go on.

With this understanding that Mother’s Day is not as benign as it might seem, we are better positioned to expand our conceptions of caring and nurturing. I leave you, then, with not only my musings about the intensified grief of infertility during a pandemic, and especially a pandemic that spans Mother’s Day, but also with two practical suggestions about how we can bring about this shift in perspective.

First, through this pandemic, we have seen people come together in unprecedented ways to provide individual support and collective solidarity. When you connect with friends and family this Sunday, ask how they have been caring for and nurturing themselves and others.

Second, I encourage us to reclaim and make relevant to the presentday context the activist influences on Mother’s Day, which date back to 1870, when Julia Ward Howe wrote the “Mother’s Day Proclamation” calling on women to join together to promote peace.

Speak up about matters that move us toward a collective future that is more compassionate and equitable than our pre-pandemic world. We will all be better for it and it might make this Sunday a bit easier for those you care for and nurture who may be silently bearing the extra weight of this pandemic.