Remember The Grieving Mothers This Mother’s Day: Bereaved Mother's Day and Beyond

This Mother’s Day, remember the mothers who grieve.

I have lost four babies in early pregnancy over the past four years, most recently as a few months ago. Every single one of those traumatic and painful losses changed me, taught me, stretched me, forced me to grow in ways I often wished I didn’t have to. But there were also pure blessings, as there always are, found in the depths of sorrow and suffering.

Each of my angel babies are held in a special place in my heart that reminds me always to remember those who grieve, especially when the ones grieving are mothers. When you grow a life inside you, no matter how long that life lives, there are no words that encapsulate the feeling of birthing a death, or, as I can only imagine, burying a child you’ve held. The heartache of what you long for juxtaposed with what you face in reality is strong enough to crack you open and leave you in a million shattered pieces. The disconnect you feel as everyone around you carries on with their lives, shares their highlights, and acts as if everything is fine, as you stand paralyzed by grief, unable to move or feel. 

A leaf I picked up off the cemetery grounds at the group funeral held for babies lost in early pregnancy, birth, or infancy. It serves as a reminder that seasons have a beginning and an end, and the rebirth of the spring always follows even the coldest period of winter storms.

So too, is the disconnect I feel watching the mothers of Gaza search for their children buried beneath the rubble, as so many around me bury their heads in the sand. 

And so this Mother’s day, I say, remember the mothers of Palestine. The mothers for whom a day filled with consumer-based westernized flower bouquets and Hallmark cards and decadent meals must be nothing more than yet another painful reminder of how little the world powers value their lives, no matter what empty platitudes our leaders offer on this day each May.  

So we must center the Palestinian mothers, always, but especially on a day meant to honor our maternal figures. Because if you are like me, and have experienced the loss of a child, at any age or stage, I would dare to say that the angels we birthed have given us a deeper capacity for empathy than most, and we honor our angels best by fighting for the living. 

An Instagram post from Bisan Owda from 4/1/24.

During each of my miscarriages, I leaned deeply on my Catholic faith and prayed fervently to Mary, the Blessed Mother, because she knows the pain of losing a child. I prayed to Mary, Mother of Jesus, to help me heal and to help me walk by faith and not by sight as I pushed forward through my unimaginable pain. 

I think now of the mothers of Palestine, who, at the time of this writing, have endured over six months of active genocide, only following 70+ years of apartheid and atrocious human rights abuses. Who have buried their living children at rates my mind cannot compute. Who have held their babies as they starved to death, solely because of the callous and deeply misguided ideologies of powerful entities and people.

Mary was a grieving mother from this same place. The Holy Land. She watched her son die, as many of the mothers of Gaza have done, only a short distance from where Palestinian mothers are fighting for their lives and the lives of their children and families.  Where the children of these beautiful Palestinian mothers have used their voices to speak truth to the world, record themselves during unimaginable suffering, and create a global movement for a better world, beginning with a free Palestine. The Blessed Mother too, birthed a revolution, without intending to do so. She did not seek out the life that was laid out for her, but she bravely embraced the call to action that God sent to her, by way of an angel.

So this bereaved Mother’s Day, my prayer is that our own angel babies will guide us to take our pain, and see it as intricately and inextricably linked to the pain of all mothers, particularly the mothers of Gaza. To take on their needs as our own needs. To take on the call to protect their children as we would our own. To fight for their freedom the way we would fight for ourselves. This is how solidarity works. When we begin to recognize each other as ourselves, the bonds we form cannot be broken, because they are built in love. And isn’t a fierce spirit of uncompromising love what bonds all mothers?

This Mother’s day, do something for the mothers of Gaza that helps them live in freedom. Freedom from oppression and freedom from unspeakable and entirely preventable grief. I pray that our own pain can fuel our purpose, as is the case for the pain of The Blessed Mother. 

I pray that our angels are carrying us as we collectively birth something new and more beautiful. I read a quote recently by Nikolai Pizzaro that reminded me that birthing always requires labor, and we are the ones to do the work. So let us all hold tightly to one another across the earth, our collective Mother. Let us do the work in community and solidarity to welcome new life and uncompromising love. Only then will it truly be a happy day for all mothers.