A Mother’s Day gift to everyone

To celebrate Mother’s Day all month long, enjoy the recently released Other Stages, for 99 cents through May, a “motherhood meets the performing arts” conclusion to the Ballet Theatre Chronicles.

Today I wish everyone a Happy Mother’s Day, and I mean everyone. Because, however the dice rolled for you in that department, someone gave birth to you and you will forever be connected to that person, long after the umbilical cord was snipped.

I’ve published essays about Mother’s Day in the past, exploring the pain of being a daughter who’s lost her mother but isn’t yet herself a mother, and later, offering “Gentle Tips for the Motherless Daughter” HERE. I get it now: Mother’s Day for a sizable segment of the population, is a day that causes pain.

So, in particular, these are the people I most want to wish a Happy Mother’s Day to this year:

• If you are grieving a loss of your mom from the past 12 months
• If you are grieving that loss from years back, but this day is always, always a trigger
• If your mom is fine, great, but distant, living too far away
• If your mom is emotionally distant, existing too far away
• If your mom is struggling with mental illness or substance abuse and you’re remembering “the good days” and today that hurts
• If you have children struggling with the above issues.
• If you are a birth mother who had to give up your baby
• If you are childless but a “mom” figure to important people in your life
• If your mom is alive and well but the two of you don’t get along
• If parenting feels too hard
• If you’ve lost a child. (Oh, my dear friend, my heart just aches for you as you struggle through the biggest burden there is to carry, not just today but every day. Special blessings to you. The kind with sparkles and warm blankets and boundless comfort.)
• If you’re trying to get pregnant
• If you successfully got pregnant but then lost that child (see above blessing and recipe for comfort)

The list goes on. But you get the point. There are dozens of ways to celebrate this day, but also there can be dozens of ways that it subtly pierces you and makes it feel like a day you’re just desperate to get through. I hope everyone out there finds a way to balance the two feelings. I hope there is a chocolate bar [or something else] out there that you will indulge in and smile, and think, “Well, chocolate [or something else] came through for me yet again.”

The blog’s title hints at a gift for you, and I haven’t forgotten that. You know my Ballet Theatre Chronicle series, right? In the fourth and final book that released in late January, I made the story equally about parenting. In particular, being a mother, and being blown over by the challenges when you thought you were over the hardest stuff. It’s only apt that I give it a shout-out on Mother’s Day, and make it free today, and for the next four days. If you’ve already read the book, or decided it’s not for you, I hope you’ll consider sharing the link with a friend who’s a mom, who’s had a mom, who’s struggled with parenting (is there any parent who hasn’t??) and/or someone who considers being a mother the highest calling there is. I poured my heart into this last book (yes, a few of my more challenging parenting experiences appear in the story). I guess you could call being a novelist another form of mothering. The baby has grown and has flown free. All four of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles books have. And yes, {{sniff sniff}}, I miss them. It’s a mom thing.

HERE is the link to Other Stages. To help celebrate, enjoy the other three books of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles (Off Balance, Outside the Limelight, Ballet Orphans) for 99 cents, through the entire month of May. Just click on their titles!