A New Proposal For Mother's Day

Dear Hearts,

Oh joy. It's that time of year again! Thank you capitalism for making sure that every store email list I never subscribed to now sends me a reminder of a way to "treat" myself on Mother's Day. Well, the joke is on them, because my mom is dead but I can still take ruthless advantage of their Mother's Day sales! I got new sheets, new pans, new period panties! Nothing says "celebrate motherhood" like thanking the invisible labor of women by purchasing home goods!! Wheee!

Wow, did it get political around here? Yes, hello. Welcome to 2019. I saw The Handmaid's Tale and Killing Eve, went to a few marches and now I'm super totes radicalized. Wheeeee! (jk, I was radicalized the moment I saw Teen Witch in 1989.)

See, I realized that while Mother's Day does give me complicated feelings, I have also been socially conditioned to multitask and for once I am gonna put that to good use! So, if you have come to this blog for some motherless camaraderie and commiseration, here is some space I will hold for you and all your feels.

BUT, I have a new vision for Mother's Day. My mom is dead and I don't have kids, so why not f*ck shit up?  (Don't worry, there is still brunch.)

WHAT IF...we all reorganized Mother’s Day so it’s brunch + reproductive rights? (Hallmark is charging $9+ for cards now, clearly capitalist holidays have jumped the shark.) What if we stopped making nice...and got hysterical?

Hysteria literally translates to the idea of wandering uteruses. If we weren’t afraid of being called hysterical, what might our uteruses accomplish on behalf of their own freedom? Into what bright new day might they wander? Somewhere there is a future where bodily autonomy, common sense and legislation all co-exist. In the face of current legislation, that future seems so close,  yet so far. It’s almost as hysterical as all the old boyz desperately trying to rein our autonomy in. 

WHAT IF...Mother’s Day was a riot/reclamation/celebration of our right to choose, like a big dance party where we all agree to mind our own business? You don’t need to be a mother to party hardy for that. 

By next year, let’s have figured this out and make new traditions. If there is anything we can learn from the patriarchy, it’s how to co-opt a matriarchal holiday and repurpose it for our own doctrine. (See: Easter, Halloween, everything....)

Let's reframe Mother's Day into a day of hysterical protest! Or at the very least, let's sing the lyrics to Olivia Newton-John's Physical as "Let's get hysterical-sterical! Let me hear your body talk!" 

(I know I'm not the first person to suggest this idea, so let's all work together and get a move on! If you have other resources and ideas, let me know!)

In the meantime, here's what I will be doing this Mother's Day, in the name of reproductive freedom:

• Writing thank you notes to abortion providers. (Thank you to Lady Parts Justice League for inventing the Thank Bank - Lady Parts Justice League: https://lpjleague.org/thankbank/)
• Making a Mother's Day Card for Georgia's Governor Kemp. 
• Watching The Resistance Revival Chorus on repeat: https://www.facebook.com/ResistanceRevivalChorus/?__tn__=*s-R
• Donating money
• Reading stuff & getting educated from resources like:

• https://www.abortioncarenetwork.org
• https://www.aclu.org/issues/reproductive-freedom
• https://www.rhavote.com/
• https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/
• https://www.equalrightsamendment.org

My mom is dead, but I still have plenty of time to fight.

Happy Mother's Day. May all our bodies be our own.

Love,

Laura

P.S. Let us not forget the great Mother's Day Blessing of this royal baby:

~

I don't always write about dead moms, but I love it when I do. I am an author, podcast host, Fairy Boss Mother and creativity coach.  Sign up for my mailing list, and I'll make sure you know about everything else I do. I spend way too much time on Instagram.

Mother's Day Is a Bummer...So Let's Talk About Something Else

If it's near Mothers' Day and you're feeling mad/sad, you have come to the right place. Here is where I hold space for you to be angry at the over-commercial overwhelmingness of celebrating a day that reminds you that your mom is gone. Or reminds you that you miss your baby. Or reminds you that the patriarchy is hell bent on convincing you that you can’t fully express yourself without having a baby.

Mother’s Day is a bummer.  Go ahead, wallow. I got you.

But if this year, you are looking for something different, I also got you.

Let's talk about mermaids and our matrilineal line.

Last week, I returned to mermaid camp and spent many days dipping in the fountain of youth, basking in the company of boss-sauce older broads who know all the secrets of life. It's a sorority of sirens. It was also an inter-generational gold mine of knowledge, love and community.

"Try to swim upstream," they said, and laughed when I wore myself out swimming to nowhere.

"Now, hike up the sandbar, and float back to us."

So I mermaid-crawled through the sun-sparkled crystal-clear current, exerting no energy, letting myself be carried and supported by spring water that had shot through a vent that had been shaped into a spiral over the past million-or-so years. When I was finished floating, I put my feet down and let the river push against my belly as it rushed past me. It was never going to end. It would flow around me forever.  I thought, This feels like love. 

The spring water came from a place so deep within the earth, it might be a hundred years old by the time it reached me. That also feels like love.

When we have a complicated relationship to mothers/motherhood, it can feel like we have somehow been cheated or robbed of the amount of love we were supposed to garner in our lifetime. Some part of us has been cut off. When it comes to mother-love, we are like toddlers with no sense of object permanence. If we can't see them, can we prove that they love us still? Does our love for them cease to be significant when we have no physical presence to lavish it upon?

After mermaid camp, I laid on my acupuncturist’s table, waterlogged and dreamy, trying to settle my inner ear and ground myself from swimming off into the deep blue forever.

I thought about my grandmother, and her mother. In my meditation, I thought of their love like liquid gold, filling a bucket and pouring down a trough into the next generation, like a Rube Goldberg machine of maternal affection. At each generation, my ancestors stopped to pick out the impurities, the sticks and rocks that clouded the gold, removing their burdens and passing onto me their love, their talents, their wealth, their devotion. At the bottom, I swam in a large cauldron of gold, dunking the roots of my ideas in their gold and planting an orchard of golden shower trees. Here is everything we have. Make something, they said.

Before you were born, your mother's mother loved you. Before you were born, your great-grandmother loved you. Before you were born, your great-grandmother's great-grandmother loved you. And on and on and on and on, back to the time when we were dust hitchhiking on an asteroid.

Without knowing when you would arrive, or who you would become, they loved you. Somewhere deep in your DNA, there are molecules of love from generations past that carry that love, anchoring it in the deepest core of your being. You can lose an arm, a leg, a job, a spouse, a credit rating, a house, even your dignity. They will love you still.

Generations past, through whatever fortune and misfortune your ancestors mucked through, YOU were the hope, the spark of an idea, the thing they toiled for, the person they loved although they would never meet you.

Love is a time-traveller. Like ancient starlight, it is shining down on you today.

I thought about the river. What wars had I been raging unnecessarily? Where had I been "swimming upstream" when all I had to do was let myself be held? When is it my job to hike to meet the current, and when is it my job to float?

I have a therapist who is so kind sometimes I wonder if what she is doing is therapy, or just being incredibly nice. It doesn't matter. Kindness is rehabilitative. One day, I cried on her couch while she sang me a lullaby. It was cheesy, and I wanted to argue with the song. Instead, I relaxed. I let myself be carried by her kindness.


Back to those mermaids I swam with in the ancient spring, and a secret I learned from the fountain of youth.

At some point, we experienced love as a deluge. We think if we aren't near the source, then it doesn't exist. That's like fighting the current. The truth is that you have always been loved, and continue to be loved, by forces unseen, unknown and yet to come.

Your job is to float. Your job is to open to kindness, and pass that down river. Your job is to make something of what your ancestors rain down upon you.

The best thing to make out of love is more of the same.

Happy Mother's Day to all you love-makers.

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I don't always write about dead moms, but I love it when I do. I am the Fairy Boss Mother of Cinderly, a romance novelist and a transformational coach.  Sign up for my mailing list, and I'll make sure you know about everything else I do.

What I Got My Dead Mom For Mother's Day

Dear Mom,

Happy Mother’s Day! Sorry I didn’t get you a card, or a spa trip. How about a blog post?

In the past few days, I’ve seen a lot of articles in which famous women write letters to their mothers or daughters, and I was like I WILL NOT BE MADE TO FEEL INADEQUATE IN MY CELEBRITY JUST BECAUSE I HAVE A DEAD MOM. So, here’s a letter to you. Prepare to be dazzled by my literacy! Sorry I broke with tradition and wrote this on a computer and not with three different crayons on a white wall.

Some things I’d like to tell you:

1) Now that you’re dead, you don’t have to deal with the American healthcare system, so let me fill you in on how it’s going for me. I got an IUD this week. (Don’t be scared. They’ve improved a lot since the ‘70s. The nice lady even did an ultrasound afterwards to show me that she had not perforated my uterus, therefore she did not accidentally render me sterile. I thought that was very considerate.) The insertion was more painful than I had thought it would be, so I distracted myself by thinking angry thoughts about the patriarchy and how no man ever has to take a day off when he wants to be proactive about contraception or purposeful about parenthood. You’re probably saying to yourself: Daughter, why are you writing about your contraceptive choices on the internet? This blog is supposed to be about me! But I have a point, Mom, and that point is militant feminism.

Dead Mom and Uterus-Owner, Princess Diana, gets it.

My heath insurance company informed me that it wouldn’t cover any contraception, not even the Pill. It also wouldn’t cover my annual mammogram, which, as you know, I have to get because of you. Thanks, Mom! Breast cancer is the family party that just won’t stop! When I told the receptionist at my gynecologist’s office that my insurance wouldn’t cover any contraception, she made a noise that I interpreted as “Oh, hell no,” put me on hold and then told me the nurse had approved me for their secret stash of free IUDs. Woohoo! Take that, patriarchy! Then, I called the billing department of the radiology center, and told that nice lady that my health insurance refused my appeal for coverage of my mammogram. That nice lady also made a “Oh, hell no” kind of sound, and said something mysterious about sending me a new bill. That new bill had miraculous $1,900 discount on it, next to the words “charity care.” I guess that means I have the breasts of Tiny Tim from A Christmas Carol! 

SO, since it seems like my healthcare needs can only be met by divine intervention and the grace of medical office receptionists/goddesses, I can only assume you had a hand in all of that miracle-working. Thanks for being a militantly feminist guardian dead mom angel! I am now 99% less likely to make you the dead grandmother of the love child of some ginger bartender/ex-Soviet spy (#dreamman), and my boobs are clear for another year! Happy Mother’s Day to you! 

If my lady parts had an Instagram, their bio would read, “Militant feminism is giving me life! #iud #mammogram #onfleek” And then they’d take a selfie with Barbie at Coachella. You probably don’t understand anything I just said, but don’t sweat it. Being dead means you don’t have to keep up with everything. You’re too cool for that. (Get it? Get it? Too soon?)

The only thing better than a militant feminist is a ROYAL militant feminist.

2) So, Mom, now you know that I am not giving you a love child for Mother’s Day. BUT, I am giving you something better! It is my pleasure to inform you that on behalf of the United Kingdom and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, you are the future dead step-grandmother of a princess! 

Sometimes I can’t believe Prince William’s timing. He married Duchess First Wife the weekend of my 31st birthday. At first I was offended, but then I realized his marriage anniversary is actually a secret, elaborately coded message of love. And now that William has produced a baby princess THE DAY AFTER MY 35th BIRTHDAY, I know his love is true. He might as well have handed me a birthday card that says, "Hey girl, I know your eggs are on the downtown train to No-ville. Don't worry. I got this. You just do you."

That’s right, Mom, I am the future stepmother of a princess! Happy Birthday to me, and Happy Mother’s Day to you! It’s like we are living in our very own fairytale! We just need a magic mirror and a bad attitude and our story will be complete! I don’t know what your title will be. Maybe something like Dead Queen Mother? I’ll have to research the appropriate honorifics for dead moms. If you see Princess Di, ask her what she thinks. 

The best part is that now that William has created an heir and a spare, he and I will be able to live out our lives on a yacht, devoted only to each other. Right now he has to live for his country, but once his patriotic obligations have been fulfilled, he’ll be able to live only for me. Here is a picture of our little Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana. You’ll notice that her name contains some of the same letters that are in mine! More secret love codes!

Sleeping Beauty's First Public Appearance.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! You’re the best, even when you’re dead.

Love, Laura

p.s. I know you don’t know what You Tube is, but Tina Turner is on it, so I think you’d like it.

***

Greetings to everyone who finds this blog by Googling "I have a dead mom."

I don't always write about dead moms, but I think it's fun when I do. If you want to see what else I have going on, follow me on Twitter or Facebook.

Happy Mother's Day to All of Our Dead Moms

Happy Mother's Day to my dead mom and yours!!!!

A few weeks ago, my friend Kate took me to see the sublime RadhaMUSprime at Joe's Pub. You may not have heard of her, but she is awesome. Anyone who starts their show with the line, "YO WHERE MY PERIOD AT?" is okay by me. You should definitely watch the video at the bottom of this post, but first I want to talk about RadhaMUSprime and how she is like a safety flare guiding us through the dark night of this Mother's Day holiday.

Because I see you on the other side of this screen, hate-reading Mother's Day cards and blog posts and all the tributes on your Facebook feed. And I understand that you might want to throw your computer out the window because sometimes having a dead mom can feel like someone poked a hole in your floaties right before dropping you off in the deep end. Maybe you feel like singing this:

But it doesn't have to be that way. Girl, I got you.

Because the other important thing to know about RadhaMUSprime (and excuse me if I get these details kind of wrong, because I heard them during her show while chugging a $14 glass of rosé so I may not have been listening with my most sober ears): the way I heard it, RadhaMUSprime turned 40 the year her mom passed, and it was ROUGH. So what did RadhaMUSprime decide she needed to do? She decided to launch her hip-hop career. BAD. ASS. Don't mess with daughters of dead moms, amirite?

In RadhaMUSprime we trust.

Let that be a lesson to us all: When life gives you a dead mom, go out and get famous. Boom!

At the end of the show, RadhaMUSprime performed a song in front of her mother's picture. I was on my third glass of overpriced rosé, and I was feeling it. And by feeling it, I mean I was crying and clutching my sternum while trying to look hip, like oh what a poetic voice I really enjoy this fresh, provocative talent cough cough excuse me while I rip my heart from my chest and burn it to ashes. What I mean is, she got me. And because I was three drinks in I can't recall all the words except this line, which I wrote down in my iPhone during the curtain call:

Let love flow instead of leak.

There was also a bit she said about stop complaining and live all the dreams your dead moms can't. That got me too, because like I said last time, I'm just a few years out from my mom's age at diagnosis, and plenty of times I wonder how much longer I have to live out any of my dreams, or my mother's dreams. What were her dreams, anyway? I never asked her before she died. I was too busy wanting spaghetti for dinner and crushing on my music teacher's step-son. 

The reason I wanted to share that line is that on Mother's Day, it's easy to want to stop up your heart, curl up inside yourself, and hoard your love so that no one else can have it. Because one of the things that sucks about having a dead mom is that you keep on loving them even after they're dead, and that hurts. What also hurts is watching other people get to lavish all their love on the people who are still alive to receive it, whereas your love just circles back around to yourself, digging in like a burr that stabs every time you worry it. It's easy, then, to plug up your love, so you won't feel the pain. That's a dangerous way to live. You could end up corroding your own heart, like the crumbling acid gathered on a dead battery. But it doesn't have to be like that. That doesn't have to be your life. Your life could include an amazing hip-hop career, or whatever your version of an amazing hip-hop career would be. You just have to make like RadhaMUSprime and turn your pain into poetry.

This Mother's Day, here's what I prescribe:

• Watch RadhaMUSprime's video below.
• Call someone else's mother. Call anyone who's mothered you, even though it wasn't their job to mother you. Call someone who just became a mother, call someone who's been a mother for decades. Wish them a very happy Mother's Day, and mean it. There's nothing like doing something nice for someone else to make you feel better about yourself. And there's nothing like reminding yourself about all the people who love you back.  Let love flow instead of leak. Do yourself a favor, and don't corrode your own heart.
• Live your dreams, go out and get famous, or at least speak your truth. All the dreams we have for ourselves can only happen now, while we still have time to make them. Your dead mom will be so proud of you.

If all that fails to comfort you, write some really amazing/awful dead mom poetry, and share it here. We can't all be RadhaMUSprime, but we can still rhyme! (See what I did there? You're welcome. You are so pretty.)

Love,
Laura

 fyov teaser final from Radha Blank on Vimeo.

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I don't always write about dead moms. If you want to see what else I do, follow me on Twitter or Facebook.