This coming Sunday is Mothering Sunday, (not to be confused with Mother’s Day for our American friends!) and it can be a complicated day.
For some, it is full of joy; handmade cards, small children clambering into bed with armfuls of flowers, and the simple happiness of being together.
For others, it can feel quite tender; perhaps your own mother is far away, or no longer here, perhaps your relationship is strained. Or maybe you are longing for children, or navigating the deep, demanding work of motherhood while feeling burned out. Motherhood is not a neat story. It is a long landscape, full of beauty, but also of steep paths, and seasons where we simply keep going.
If that is where you find yourself this year, you are not alone. Mothering is one of the most hidden forms of work in the world. Much of it takes place in the small moments that no one else sees; the endless answering of questions, the wiping of tears, the cooking, the listening, the guiding. These small acts shape whole lives.
Charlotte Mason once wrote that education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life. The same might be said of motherhood. It is not something that happens in grand gestures, but in the atmosphere we create day after day. The steadiness of a home where curiosity is welcomed, and life is lived alongside our children.
A Nature Invitation
If you would like a no-fuss way to mark Mothering Sunday this year, here is a small nature activity you might try together, requiring no preparation and takes as long as you would like it to.
Go outside together, and ask each member of the family to find a living thing that is beginning to grow. Perhaps a bud beginning to swell on a branch, the green shoots of a spring bulb pushing through the soil, a bird carrying nesting material.
When everyone has found something, pause together and look closely at each.
You might ask:
What do you notice?
What might this small thing become?
What does it need in order to grow?
And then just stand for a moment and take it in, together. Growth in nature rarely looks dramatic. Most of it happens almost invisibly.
Motherhood often feels the same. The love we give, the patience we practise, the time we spend alongside our children, these things may feel insignificant in the moment, but they are shaping something that will grow for years to come.
Mothering Sunday doesn’t need to be perfect, it can simply be a day to pause and notice the life that is growing around you, and the life that is growing, quietly and steadily, within the work of mothering itself.
From my home to yours,
Dear Lynn,
This really resonated with me. We don’t celebrate Mothering Sunday in my country, but I’ll still try to follow your simple but profound suggestion. I think small moments like these might do us all well.
Many thanks!