When Mother’s Day is a joy and a grief for single mums

Two things can be true at the same time. Work can be rewarding but also boring. Church can be encouraging but also socially draining. Friendships can be uplifting but also hard work. And Mother’s Day can be a day of joy and a day of grief for single mums.

As a single mum, one of my favourite things in the whole world is to spend time with my boys. They are teenagers now, different people from the five- and seven-year-olds they were when we started this single mum reality. Now they are older, they have interesting ideas and opinions, they have both taken charge of their own faith journey, and they are so very very funny.

But Mother’s Day is also a day of grief. Nothing happens on Mother’s Day unless I have organised it and paid for it. I have the ideas, I organise the kids to get the presents, I book the table for lunch, I drive us all there and pay for it all. And it’s lovely—but it is exhausting having to organise it for yourself. It is a stark reminder that nothing happens unless you do it yourself. It is the reminder that there is only you to do it all.

I try to stay off social media on Mother’s Day. It hurts seeing other mums get showered with love that they didn’t have to make sure was staged into the day. Even though I know that Facebook is a curated version of reality, it is painful to see gifts that (it looks like) a mum didn’t organise for herself. It aches seeing the care that the people around her thought of. Love in action is the imagining of how it can be expressed best for the object of your affection. It’s creative. It’s personal. It’s thoughtful. And I do hope that eventually my sons will learn to show love in this way. But for most single mums, apart from the bits we organise ourselves, it’s just another day. And that makes it a day of grief. We don’t have anyone to organise ways to show love.

Here is an important corrective though.

For single mums, Mother’s Day is not just for us. It’s for our children. We are showing them how women should be treated. For me, with two sons, I am modelling to them how they should treat their wives and the mothers of their children. For mothers of daughters, you are showing them how they should expect to be treated, and how to treat their husbands and fathers of their children on Father’s Day.

This might seem like it’s just another reason the day is not about the single mother, but it’s an important one. Because it leads on to my second corrective.

If we feel disappointment or frustration or grief on Mother’s Day, it is because of our single mother situation. It is not the fault of our kids. But showing negative emotions about the day might lead them to think (and internalise) that our grief is their fault. It is not, and they should never be given cause to think this.

But while this also can be a burden on single mums, our churches can help to ease it in various ways.

Pray for her

I am content in my singleness, but the times when I have yearned for a husband is when the days have been emotionally so taxing that I have thought, ‘I wish I had a husband to pray for me’. Single mums might need prayer for specific needs, but often it’s for more general things like experiencing kindness in the everyday or finding emotional respite from the mental load.

So, I would suggest, instead of asking what she would like prayer for, send her a message or drop a card in her letterbox that says that you have prayed—and will continue to pray—for her. Receiving prayer without asking for it is a massive blessing to the single mum. How would a single mum feel if she received two or three messages from random people who told her that they had prayed for her?

Facilitate the kids supporting their mum

With mums’ OK, you could help the kids to make something, write something, or go out and buy something for Mother’s Day. You could even coach the kids on what they should do on Mother’s Day and tell them how Mother’s Day plays out in your house. This gives the kids a broader landscape and understanding of how to show love in action instead of just the bits that their mum has organised. Facilitating the kids also relieves the single mum of the burden of having to think for the whole family for the day.

Drop her a note or gift

It might be a ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ card, or a meal for the night so she doesn’t have to prep, or a small bunch of flowers or something. But I can guarantee you that receiving a written word or gift that she didn’t organise for herself will be a massive deal for the single mum.

Make extra effort for her at church

At church on the day, go out of your way to wish the single mum a happy Mother’s Day. Remember, she is your Christian sister, and her children are your Christian brothers and sisters. Let her know she is seen and appreciated.

All these things are easy ways to show God’s love in action without impinging on your own Mother’s Day celebration and without making the single mum feel that she has got in the way of someone else’s day. They are God’s love in action expressed through the family of God towards one of his chosen. They remind her (and her children) that she is seen by God and loved so much by him that he placed her in a community where his love bears fruit.

I pray that these small expressions of Christian love would make the single mum feel like Hagar in the desert:

‘She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me”.’ (Genesis16:13).

I pray that they would let her know that the Lord is her shepherd, that she lacks nothing. That he makes her lie down in green pastures, leads her beside quiet waters, and refreshes her soul. (Psalm 23:1–3).

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Ruth Baker is a single mum of two boys. She blogs at ‘Meet me where I am’ and is the author of Are We There Yet? (ArkHouse Press, 2020) and a contributor to Parenting in God's Family: Biblical Wisdom for Everyday Issues.

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