Mother’s Day is not a joyful occasion for everyone. For many people, particularly in the Black community, the second Sunday in May carries anxiety, grief, isolation, and a particular kind of pressure that rarely gets named out loud. If you spent this week dreading that day rather than celebrating it, you are responding honestly to a real wound.
I am Nicky Cameron, a trauma therapist and founder of Emergent Counseling and Consulting in Oakland Park, Florida. My team and I are a group of Black therapists trained in trauma-focused, mind-body therapies. We serve clients across Fort Lauderdale, Sunrise, Pompano Beach, Deerfield Beach, Miramar, Coral Springs, Hollywood, and Oakland Park. This piece is for the clients who sit across from us and lower their voices when they admit they do not celebrate Mother’s Day. You do not need to lower your voice here.
“Giving birth to a child and mothering that child are two separate acts. One is biological. The other is a sustained, intentional practice of love, protection, and presence.”
The Grief Nobody Gives You Permission to Name
Mother’s Day is one of the most commercially saturated holidays in the United States. According to the National Retail Federation, Americans spent an estimated $35.7 billion on Mother’s Day in 2023. That figure represents a cultural expectation so loud it is hard to escape. Every advertisement, every social media post, every church sermon that week carries the same message: celebrate her, honor her, show up for her.
For many people, that message lands as pressure rather than joy. And for those who survived maternal abuse, neglect, or abandonment, it lands as something closer to assault. The grief of not having been mothered properly is real and layered. And in the Black community, it is often buried beneath cultural and religious frameworks that do not leave much room for complexity.
The Cultural Silence Around Maternal Harm in the Black Community
Within many Black families and communities, there exists an unspoken rule: the mother is above reproach. She sacrificed, she worked, and she kept the lights on. These things may be entirely true, and they can also coexist with the truth that she caused harm. Those two realities are not mutually exclusive, even though our community often treats them that way.
The phrase you have probably heard is this: “But she’s your mother.” Sometimes it comes with additions. “She did the best she could.” “She went through so much.” “You need to let it go.” These statements are not always wrong in isolation. What makes them harmful is how they are deployed, specifically as a mechanism to silence the person who was hurt rather than to address the hurt itself.
When someone is told to move on without being given space to first be heard, the message they absorb is that their pain is inconvenient. That it threatens something. That their healing is less important than the comfort of everyone around them.
When Religion Becomes Another Layer of Pressure
The commandment to honor your father and mother is real, and for many Black families shaped by faith, it carries enormous weight. I want to be honest with you: honoring a parent does not require you to pretend they did not harm you. It does not require you to celebrate them on a day that triggers real pain. It does not require silence in exchange for belonging.
Spiritual frameworks that are used to weaponize guilt rather than facilitate genuine healing are doing harm, even when the intention is care. You are allowed to hold your faith and your truth at the same time.
What This Day Actually Feels Like When You Are Grieving
The emotional experience of Mother’s Day for survivors of maternal harm often includes a cluster of responses that may feel confusing because they appear contradictory.
- Anxiety that builds in the weeks leading up to the day, not just on the day itself
- Depression or emotional numbness that arrives without obvious cause
- Anger that feels shameful because society says this should be a day of love
- Isolation, pulling away from social media, family gatherings, and public spaces
- Grief for the relationship you wanted and never received
- Guilt for grieving something others around you are celebrating
These responses are not signs of weakness or ingratitude. They are the body and mind responding accurately to an unresolved wound. A 2012 systematic review and meta-analysis published in PLOS Medicine by Norman and colleagues found that childhood emotional neglect was associated with a significantly elevated risk of depressive and anxiety disorders in adults. The absence of emotional attunement from a caregiver is not a minor thing. The absence of emotional attunement from a mother is not a minor thing. It shapes how the nervous system learns to function.
Giving Birth Is Not the Same as Mothering
This is the core truth I want you to hold today and every day: giving birth is a biological event. Mothering is a relational practice. One can happen without the other.
Mothering looks like emotional attunement. It looks like protection, consistency, and the willingness to be accountable when harm is caused. It looks like making space for a child’s feelings rather than demanding the child manage the parent’s feelings. When those things were absent, the loss is real. Naming it is not an act of betrayal. It is an act of honesty.
And here is something else I want to say clearly: the shame that rises up when you try to name this is not the truth about you. Shame is a defense mechanism. It shows up to protect you from feelings that feel too large or too dangerous to access. Underneath the shame is often profound grief, legitimate anger, and a longing for something you deserved and did not receive. That longing is not pathological. It is human.
Accountability Does Not Disappear Because Someone Is Your Mother
One of the most painful dynamics I see in practice is the expectation that a mother’s identity absolves her of the impact of her behavior. It does not. Harm caused by a mother is still harm. Abuse carried out by a mother is still abuse. Abandonment, emotional neglect, manipulation, and conditional love are not neutralized by the biological fact of birth.
This is particularly important in the Black community, where structural hardship has often made parenting under enormous strain the norm rather than the exception. The structural context matters. It provides explanation. It does not provide exemption. Two things can be simultaneously true: your mother was carrying more than she should have had to carry, and the way she managed that weight caused you real harm.
The Women Who Showed Up When Your Mother Could Not or Would Not
Many people who did not receive adequate mothering from their biological mother were mothered by someone. An aunt, a grandmother, a neighbor, a teacher or a family friend who quietly stepped into the gap. If that is your story, Mother’s Day can belong to her. It is not betrayal to celebrate the woman who actually showed up. It is not disloyalty, it is an honest accounting of who held you.
If you are one of those women who stepped in for a child who needed you, I want to acknowledge you directly. What you did required something of you. The consistency, the emotional presence, the willingness to love someone else’s child as if they were your own. That is not nothing, it is everything.
You Get to Choose What You Do With This Day
Let me be direct about something that does not get said often enough: you are allowed to opt out. Choosing not to celebrate Mother’s Day does not make you a villain. It does not make you ungrateful, selfish, or spiritually deficient. It makes you someone who has decided to protect your mental health on a day that has historically not been safe for you.
What you do with that day is your choice. Some options that clients have found meaningful:
- Use the day intentionally to grieve. Give the sadness somewhere to go rather than suppressing it.
- Do something restorative for yourself that has nothing to do with the holiday.
- Journal to the child-self who did not receive what she needed.
- Reach out to someone who did show up for you and tell them what they meant to you.
- Simply rest, grief is exhausting. Rest is not laziness.
None of these require you to perform celebration you do not feel. None of them require you to call anyone you are not safe with. You get to decide what aligns with where you actually are, not where others expect you to be.
Mothering the Parts of You That Were Deprived
One of the most significant pieces of healing work that emerges from maternal trauma is learning to give yourself what was withheld. This is not a metaphor. It is a concrete, practiced skill. It means learning to notice when you are overwhelmed and respond with gentleness instead of criticism. It means building in rest without requiring yourself to earn it first. It means allowing yourself to have needs and treating those needs as legitimate.
If you are a mother yourself, this work is also for you. You get to choose to show up differently than you were shown. That is not a small thing. Breaking a pattern that has been carried across generations requires intentional, often painful effort. It also requires support. You do not have to do it alone.
“There is nothing worse than having to accept that the person meant to protect you was the one who harmed you. And there is nothing shameful about grieving that truth.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it wrong to feel sad or angry on Mother's Day?
No. Sadness and anger on Mother’s Day are appropriate emotional responses when your experience of being mothered included harm, neglect, or abandonment. These feelings are not signs of ingratitude. They are signs that something real happened to you and has not yet been fully processed.
Does not celebrating Mother's Day mean I hate my mother?
No. Choosing not to participate in a holiday that causes you distress is a boundary, not a declaration of hatred. Many people hold complicated feelings about a parent simultaneously: love, grief, anger, and a wish that things had been different. Those feelings can coexist without requiring you to perform celebration that does not reflect where you actually are.
How do I handle family pressure to call or visit on Mother's Day?
This is one of the harder parts. A brief, honest response is usually more sustainable than a complex explanation. Something like, “I’m taking care of myself today,” does not require you to justify your history. If the pressure comes with guilt-tripping or manipulation, that itself is information about whether the relationship is currently a safe one. A therapist who specializes in family trauma can help you navigate these conversations in a way that protects your wellbeing.
What if my faith says I must honor my mother?
Many theologians and pastoral counselors distinguish between honoring a parent and suppressing the truth of harm caused by that parent. Honoring does not require pretending or silence. And it does not require you to place yourself in situations that are unsafe. If your faith community is using spiritual language to pressure you into silencing genuine trauma, that deserves its own careful examination.
How do I find a therapist who understands Black family trauma?
Look for a therapist who identifies as culturally informed or who has explicit training in intergenerational and racial trauma. Therapy for Black Girls (therapyforblackgirls.com) maintains a vetted directory. If you are in Broward County, our team at Emergent Counseling and Consulting specializes in exactly this work. You can reach us at 954-533-4828 or visit dare2emerge.com.
Is it too late to heal from childhood maternal trauma as an adult?
No. Healing from childhood trauma is possible at any age. The brain retains neuroplasticity throughout life, meaning new patterns of response can be built through consistent, supported therapeutic work. Trauma-focused, mind-body approaches such as somatic therapy, AEDP, and Internal Family Systems are particularly effective for the kind of deep relational wounds that maternal trauma creates.
A Final Word
If Mother’s Day is hard for you, you are not alone and you are not wrong. The grief you carry for the love you did not receive is legitimate, and the anger is legitimate. The decision to protect yourself on that day is legitimate.
You are allowed to celebrate the women who actually showed up for you. You are allowed to grieve the depth of what you did not have. You are allowed to opt out entirely. And you are allowed to use that day to begin, or continue, the practice of mothering yourself back toward wholeness.
Your healing does not need anyone’s permission. It does not require the acknowledgment of the person who caused the wound. It begins with you deciding that what you carry deserves to be put down.
If you are ready to begin that work, we are here.
Emergent Counseling and Consulting | Oakland Park, FL
Serving Fort Lauderdale, Sunrise, Pompano Beach, Deerfield Beach, Miramar, Coral Springs, Hollywood, and Oakland Park.
Phone: 954-533-4828
Website: dare2emerge.com