5/8/16

Today's Horoscope

All signs:
Today is Mother's Day. We all have a mother. Motherhood is often a thankless job, full of sacrifice and heartache, side by side with the joy and fulfillment that goes along with it. Today you should thank your mother for all that she has given you and  the unconditional love she has heaped upon you all your life.
There are also some mothers that could have done better. The problem with being a mom is that having a baby doesn't automatically make you mother of the year. Moms get all the blame but not as much credit as they deserve.
You need to remember that your mom isn't just your mom, she's a woman. She has all the same problems and fears and emotions and doubts eating at her that you do. She not only had to care for you, she had the enormity of her whole life and the world around her and the people in it bearing down on her too.
As much as you never want to think of it in these terms, your mother is a real person, with her own complicated life filled with things like love, sex, physical and mental abuse, desire and death. Some mothers are able to deal with all that and still put their children first, but I'm not sure how.
I know some people who have lasting issues with their mothers because they feel their mothers didn't measure up. They feel let down because their moms didn't live up to some certain ideal they had in their head of what a mother should be.
And in some cases that's justified. Moms are people, imperfect and stumbling through it, just like we are. Who knows what horrors they had to deal with before you came along, dropped into their lives when they weren't even sure who they were at the moment. Who knows what horrors they were living through while they raised you, maybe running a gauntlet you couldn't see, navigating a minefield that had them terrified and frozen.
People like to say “there's no excuse” for some particular behavior or transgression, but there's always a reason. Cause and effect. Whatever the situation is, there's never an instant where adding a child to raise makes life easier. Some women were never cut out for motherhood, and in days gone by they weren't given much choice.
If your mother couldn't quite pull it off, maybe take this mother's day to reflect on any feelings of anger or disappointment you feel towards her, and if it's justified. Try to think of her as a fully realized woman, not as your own personal 24 hour a day servant and caregiver.
See her for who she is and understand that your relationship with your mother is just that: a relationship. Relationships involve give and take, and effort on both sides. Instead of always scrutinizing her actions, how do you measure up as a child? Were you always there for your mother, providing unflinching love and affection like you expect from her? Do you appreciate what she gave you, now that you don't need all that round the clock attention from her?
Instead of focusing on all the things she didn't do, maybe look at what she did manage to give you while dealing with her own situation, one that you probably never gave much thought to. She didn't grow up and have you and raise you in the world you live in now.
Whether or not your mom was perfect or imperfect, mother of the year or a horrorshow, ask yourself how you might have managed in her place. If nothing else, her mistakes gave you a road map on what to avoid, and her love gave you something to cling to when you needed it most. Then take this day to thank her for what she was and still is able to give you, and be happy with that.
The stars look at our mothers with awe. They remember a time when humans first looked to the sky and tried to make sense of the world. They came up with their creator gods, and in the beginning they were all women. Women, after all, give life, so certainly the god that created the universe was female.
Then came the gods of war, the destructors, full of greed and bloodlust, and they were male and hungry for power, and they supplanted the nurturing female creator gods. The women gods, just like the human women, were regulated to ordinary and mundane tasks, if they even had any say at all.
Yet these women went on, and they raised the children and provided the world with incomparable gifts as they suffered in silence. They watched as men treated them with disdain or indifference, and sent their beloved children to die in war. They bore the brunt of abuse and scorn, and soldiered on with a strength that any man would envy.
These are our mothers, and what they give us is something only a woman can.
So today, one day a year at least, celebrate it and cherish it for the gift it is.
We all have a mother.