Mother’s Day: What Motherhood in a Pandemic Taught Me

For the second consecutive year, Mother’s Day 2021 is being celebrated under the constraints of a pandemic; lockdowns restrictions, unease and anxiety our generation has never seen. Motherhood is difficult enough under normal circumstances. However, motherhood during a pandemic? Now that’s a whole different kettle of fish. All the key stressors are exacerbated. This pandemic has given me much pause and reflection on my role as a mother. To watch my young child, lose a year of academic and social development, external exploration and learning. To watch her reach to the sudden confinement and lack of visiting aunts. Listening to her ask for months on end when she might be able to go back to school and witness her heart-wrenching attempt to understand my response and ease my discomfort by saying she understood, even when she really didn’t.

Your Child’s Mental Health Equally as Important as Your Own

For me, the pandemic brought motherhood face to face with the aspect of parenting that nurtures mental and emotional well being in tiny humans. I’ve always been conscious, but it’s the kind of reminder that you always knew about, but to come face to face with it when your own mental health deteriorates reinforces the fact that children need more than physical resources to be cared for and to lead healthy lives so they can go on to be healthy adults. I watched my own child struggle for a year. And I watch her flourish now at the bit of normalcy and stability we’ve been able to give her this year. It also keeps me the very precipice anxiety, knowing how frail the structure is. Knowing that one day we can wake up and find ourselves back to square one like this time last year. 

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It brought me face to face with realities even newer mothers must have felt and continue to feel. It’s bad enough all the things that go through your mind as a new mother under normal circumstances. How you want to protect your child. How your body is flooded with hormones and you are just doing what your can to make it through the early stages.  To have a global health crisis thrown into the mix… well!

It brought us face to face with proverbial rainy days and the importance of being financially stable before having children. 

Mother’s Day 2021

So here we are yet again in another conundrum as the world scrambles to vaccinate against this annoying virus. At this point, we can only hope for some semblance of normalcy for next Mother’s Day, as we certainly don’t have it for this one.

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Saluting All Mothers

My community across my blog and social platforms, whether Facebook, Instagram or Mail list is made up of approximately 75% women and many more who are silent readers. Most you are mothers, aspiring mothers or mother figures in some way. To love like this is a privilege. To all the mothers and mother figures in my community. I see you. I see your love poured into your child(ren). It is a debt of incomparable measure… one that can never truly, fully be repaid.

Motherhood is a privilege and a gift. A responsibility. We carry the human race on our backs and inside our bodies one, two, three and even more tiny human beings at a time.

But for now, we salute motherhood. We salute the strength, courage and resilience. We salute the love, the sacrifices, the struggles, the persistence. We salute the mother doing it with support and to those doing it alone. To those that have been doing it a while, and those that are new. We salute you. May you feel cherished, and if nothing else, may you feel rested for Mother’s Day 2021.

As you reflect on this Mother’s Day 2021, what have you learned about motherhood during a pandemic?

Xo, Shandean.

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