While We Still Can, Let’s Love Our Mums Loudly

It’s Mother’s Day, which leaves me reflecting on the women who held more than we ever realised

While We Still Can, Let’s Love Our Mums Loudly

The Complexity of Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day can stir many emotions. For some, it’s joyful and noisy, filled with flowers, burnt toast breakfasts, and children proudly carrying slightly lopsided handmade cards, with glitter still falling off by lunchtime. For others, it aches deeply.

This week, we’ve discussed some of the quieter griefs that surround days like this. We think of those missing their mothers, those grieving pregnancies that never became children, and the men who quietly longed to become fathers but never got there. We also consider those whose relationships with motherhood are far more complicated than the greeting cards suggest.

But somewhere in the middle of all these complex human stories sits another truth worth saying out loud:

Many mums loved us in ways we did not fully understand until much later.

The Unseen Efforts of Mothers

As children, we often take our mothers for granted. They seem to exist like electricity or gravity—constant, reliable, and permanent. Meals magically appear. School uniforms are washed. Appointments are remembered. Someone knows where your other shoe is. Someone notices when your voice sounds “off” before you even realise you’re upset.

At the time, it all feels ordinary. It’s only as adults, particularly when life begins to tire us in familiar ways, that we start to realise how much of their own exhaustion many mothers quietly swallowed so we could feel safe.

The invisible labour of motherhood is extraordinary precisely because so much of it looks unremarkable from the outside.

It’s the staying awake until everyone gets home safely. It’s the mental lists that never stop running. It’s the lunchboxes packed while sick. It’s the pretending to be okay financially so the children don’t worry. It’s the emotional buffering mothers perform inside households every single day without anyone formally acknowledging it.

So many mums carried entire family ecosystems quietly on their nervous systems while still somehow asking everyone else if they were okay. Most of us only fully see it later—sometimes far too late.

The Cruel Lessons of Grief

That’s one of grief’s crueler lessons: it often sharpens appreciation after opportunities have already begun to disappear. You hear yourself say something your mother used to say and suddenly understand her differently. You find yourself exhausted in the same places she once was. You realise the woman you thought “worried too much” was often simply carrying the emotional weight of an entire family while trying to make it look easy.

Suddenly, all those ordinary moments become sacred in hindsight.

The phone calls. The recipes. The reminders to take a jumper. The way she always waited awake until you got home. The small rituals that once felt so permanent that you barely noticed them happening.

A Gentle Invitation to Pause

So perhaps this Mother’s Day is simply a gentle invitation to pause long enough to notice.

To say the thing. To make the phone call. To stay at the table a little longer. To hug your mum without rushing it. To ask her about her life before she became “Mum.” To remember that beneath motherhood was always a whole human being with dreams, fears, heartbreaks, and exhaustion of her own.

And if your mum is still here, love her loudly while you can.

Because one day, you’d trade almost anything for one more ordinary conversation. One more cup of tea together. One more story you’ve heard a hundred times before. One more chance to say, properly and without embarrassment:

“Thank you. I see it now.”

Celebrating the Mothers Among Us

And for the mothers reading this—the exhausted ones, the devoted ones, the imperfect-but-trying-with-everything-they-have ones—thank you too. For all the ways you turned up. Again and again and again. Even when nobody noticed.

As we reflect on this day, let’s embrace the complexity of motherhood. Let’s acknowledge the sacrifices made and the love given. Let’s strive to create a space where we can share our stories, our struggles, and our triumphs.

In doing so, we not only honour our mothers but also empower ourselves and each other. After all, we’re all navigating this journey together, and it’s okay to lean on one another.

So, here’s to the mothers, the caregivers, and the families facing modern challenges. Let’s continue to support one another, fostering stronger, more resilient family units. Together, we can create a brighter future for all of us.

Let’s love our mums loudly while we still can.