Zibby Mag

By Tara Schuster

Those who nurture us are not necessarily our biological mothers, but their sacrifice and grace are also worthy of celebration.

“What are you doing with your mom this weekend? Have any plans?” A well-meaning colleague asked, unaware that a question as seemingly innocuous as asking what I had for lunch tears off the scab on my most shameful wound.

Do I really want to go into the details of why I have not spoken to my mother in ten years, or how, subsequently, Mother’s Day became a dreaded holiday for me?

“I’m doing a spa day,” I say, omitting that I will be alone.

Childhood memories of my mother translate to a woman screaming at me, or subjecting me to excruciating physical inspections — during which she says that my body is “bad” — or confiding bizarre, inappropriate secrets that shouldn’t even be shared with other adults.

“Your father doesn’t love you; he never wanted you. The only reason you’re alive is because I didn’t get an abortion. I saved you because I wanted you, because I planned for you,” she once told me in the back of a taxi on the way to the airport.

I was six.

I remember my entire body turning hot, burning with the shame of being alive. I wished that the doors would fling open so that I could hurl myself out of the speeding car. Then, maybe I would be safe.

Of course, I wanted the kind of mother that I heard about from friends or saw in Nancy Meyers films. I wanted someone with an easy laugh, who would make me croissants in an unrealistically perfect kitchen and sling her arms around me in a casual embrace. But by my early twenties, I realized that my mother simply did not have the capacity to provide maternal love — the kind of love that makes you feel safe and supported.

Once I graduated college, and could choose the people with whom I spent my time, I made the decision that my mother would not be involved in my life. It wasn’t so much a choice as a necessity for survival. If I wanted mothering, it was going to have to come from somewhere else.

By my early twenties, I realized that my mother simply did not have the capacity to provide maternal love.

I started searching. I read Nora Ephron’s books as if I were having a conversation with her, writing my responses to her in the margins. She taught me about everything from positive body image to how much wine was too much wine.

I spent Sunday nights at my best friend’s house for family dinner, helping out in the kitchen so that I could get a little extra time with her caring mother. I gave myself soothing baths; I taught myself about makeup; I surrounded myself with friends who loved me unconditionally.

I thought often of how my professor, the playwright Paula Vogel, had once said “take yourself seriously,” reminding me that I was a worthy and dignified person who belonged in this world.

Each of these people, whether they knew it or not, mothered me. Yet, I still spend each Mother’s Day alone. The traditional understanding of Mother’s Day excludes the kind of maternal love that I’ve sought out in my life. But I know I’m not the only one who finds it to be a complicated, difficult holiday.

Children, and adults, whose mothers have passed away are painfully reminded of their loss. Women who have recently miscarried or are struggling to become mothers are flooded with images of maternal bliss on social media. The implication is that everyone else’s life is perfect and #MomIsMyBestFriend. Even those people who have a merely adequate relationship with their mothers will be bombarded with promotional e-mails for all the things they should buy the woman who gave them life.

Evidently, she is worth diamonds, chocolates, and flowers, but only on one day each year.

The traditional understanding of Mother’s Day excludes the kind of maternal love that I’ve sought out in my life.

It’s time we move away from this commercial holiday centered around one’s biological mother and instead celebrate a broader kind of maternal love that is compassionate, intimate, and unconditional, and that comes not just from mothers, but from fathers, friends, grandparents, and teachers who reaffirm the meaning of our lives.

I don’t believe we value this kind of love enough — the pandemic has thrown this tendency into sharp relief. We’ve taken for granted the love of teachers and childcare providers who selflessly help raise us and shape our worldviews. We’ve failed to notice the devotion of nurses and doctors, people who are currently risking their lives to care for us. We haven’t fully appreciated the friends who have guided us through our darkest moments into the light.

And how do we reward those professional caregivers? Although the work of teachers, nurses, and childcare providers is arguably more important to our development as human beings than just about anything else, we pay them as if they’re expendable. We reward them as if deep compassion and caring are mundane rather than miraculous. Their compensation doesn’t seem commensurate with the impact their labor has on our lives and the fabric of our society. While we may break out the cards and gifts on Mother’s Day, our country still ranks dead-last in the developed world for paid maternity leave.

It’s time we start to value maternal love in all its forms instead of relegating it to a commercial holiday once a year. That doesn’t suit the power and profound importance of maternal support. Those who nurture us are not necessarily our biological mothers, but their sacrifice and grace are also worthy of celebration.

I’d like to propose that we offer daily gestures of gratitude to the people in our lives who accept, protect, and help us cultivate our natural talents and abilities. I’d like to propose that we cherish the people in our lives who provide the unconditional love and support that make us feel worthy.

We would no longer have a day characterized by flowers, brunch, and predatory retailers. Instead, we would revolutionize how we value and celebrate maternal love — in all its forms.

Goodbye, Mother’s Day. Hello, Maternal Year.

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Tara Schuster served as Vice President of Talent and Development at Comedy Central where she was the Executive in Charge of the Emmy® and Peabody Award-winning Key & Peele, the Emmy® Award-winning @Midnight, and Lights Out with David Spade. Her book, Buy Yourself The F*cking Lilies, debuted as the #1 New Release in Humor Essays and Self-Help on both Audible and Kindle. InStyle, People Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Goodreads, BuzzFeed, Goop, and many others have chosen Buy Yourself The F*cking Lilies as one of the best new books of 2020.