Anyone else find Mother's Day cards uncomfortable to read?

[ContessaDiPulpo]

By that I mean the cards that pop up as adverts, not the ones I actually receive from my darling DC!

All these cards saying things like 'You're the best mum', 'You always have my back', 'You look after me and I love you for it' etc. I find myself reading them and becoming slightly sad at just how few of them would have applied to my own maternal situation. My DM died several years ago so this is admittedly somewhat of an academic problem, but I still find myself revisiting it every year.... I always end up thinking of that phrase from Philip Larkin, the one about the effort to find 'Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind.'

Just posting for solidarity really!

[Ginqueen20]

I am glad to see a thread full of other people like me (although sorry you all experience it too). I have never been close to my mum after an abusive childhood, I finally cut her off recently and I feel relief that today wasn’t about her. I would always find the 29p card in the card factory with a generic happy Mother’s Day and no message instead, then a cheap box of chocolates. Now I don’t have to make the effort and I’m much happier not having such a nasty person in mine and my children’s lives. to you all.

[cafenoirbiscuit]

Cats? Card

[cafenoirbiscuit]

I have been known to snort in derision and argue with the verses in the cards when I’m choosing for mil. She places great store on the verses in the cats - a minimum of 3 rhyming ones, there needs to be a paper insert, and a ribbon.

[SunshineCake]

@HandyBendySandy Your poor DH. Please tell him there is a stranger here who stands behind him while he goes through the shitty motions for a woman who doesn't deserve it and who is cheering him on to release him so that Mother's Day 2022 never happens for her and him as a collective but he focuses on himself and his family.

[ContessaDiPulpo]

Hugs to all who find this a hard day

I got one card from DS1 where he'd made me look like a cartoon villain (he admitted this was an accident but still hilarious) and one from DS2 which showed the forces of good slaying my enemies. There is no gush. It's wonderful.

Am thinking of my sister a bit today - I still mark Mother's day because I am one, but she doesn't have any new associations with the day since our mum died. That must make it harder

[minniemoocher]

I choose one that's only got basic wording eg happy Mother's Day on the front and with love inside, I love my mother but hate card wording. Dd2 sent me beautiful flowers which had a card with she could choose the words, dd1 lives with me but is yet to grace me with her presence and I seriously doubt she will have bought me a card - she has medical issues

[HedgeOwl]

Very sorry to all those missing their mums today who had wonderful mums.

[HedgeOwl]

It’s getting harder to find cards that just say “happy mother’s/Father’s Day” without the gushing to send to parents who really aren’t the worlds best mum/dad!

[HandyBendySandy]

My mum was lovely, but she died in May last year without ever opening her mother's day card. It's fine, we knew what we were to each other - miss you today mum. I always got her a card that said something not too excessively gushing, but maybe a little bit twee that we would both cackle at like a pair of witches. But we would both be a bit shiny eyed.

Poor DH, on the other hand, is stoically going through the torture of visiting his mother today with a suitable card because he is doing his duty. She has done many evil, dreadful things in her life and she is a poisonous, black-hearted, duplicitous liar. She has 7 siblings, 3 children and 7 grandchildren and an ASBO yet only her 2 sons still speak to her - I think that says a lot about a person. DH will bite his tongue through all the bitter vitriol and hatred she can spew for a maximum of an hour - her card simply says "Mum - On Mother's Day".

[Heysiriyoutwat]

My mum was horrible.

She died when I was 11, but every year my dad forced me to write a sickly sweet card that he would laminate and put on her grave. When I got to 16, I refused. He still does it on my behalf. I got sent a photo this morning of one he's going to take to the grave saying "you are the best mum ever, all my love, hey Siri"

If that woman was still alive I'd have cut her out of my life as soon as I could, but still, he persists!

[FunnyWonder]

I remember DP saying years ago that the perfect card for his mum would just read 'You are my mother'. Nothing else. Because, as far he's concerned, that's about it.

She loves gushy verses and reads them carefully, believing every word. There are five siblings, three of whom are no longer speaking to her. DP's younger sister still lives with her and happily fulfils her mother's need for affirmation by giving her sickeningly gushing cards (even though the woman has made her life a misery and stripped her of so much self confidence, she still lives 'at home' in her late thirties). This pisses me off, even though it's none of my business, because as long as someone is telling her how wonderful she is, she will cling onto that as a true version of herself.

[Blustered]

I was in M&S shopping for a Mother’s Day card this week and there were about 20 gushy ‘you’re such a special, amazing mum, always there for me’ etc etc cards and one that said ‘happy mother’s day’ with a non-gushy message something along the lines of hope you have a very happy day.

I got that card and it was the second to last one. There were plenty of the others left. It made me wonder at the time if it wasn’t so uncommon for people not to feel their mother’s warranted such a heartfelt card.

[SunshineCake]

For everyone who dreads today, please find some time to do something for yourself that you wouldn't normally get chance to do.

Usually something happens to upset me in Mother's Day. A child does nothing, dh and I have a tiff about past MD as we did last year, I end up doing too many chores as usual.

Today, I asked dh to go all out and I am thinking about how I am the mum and not thinking about how shit mine was. I am not washing all the bedding as usual or doing any laundry, dishwasher duties or cooking. I'm opening Christmas chocolates. Doggy will be allowed on the bed shortly. All small things but good things. I will ring my friends in their 80s who looked after me as a small child and come off the phone feeling loved and grateful I have them.

Take anything you can to get bit through the day but to change how it usually goes.

.

[ContessaDiPulpo]

[quote MrsBobDylan]@SunshineCake the truth is there are people who think giving birth allows a woman to repeatedly fail her child but still be forgiven. And that forgiveness is is the 'right' choice if we want to heal and move on.

Well fuck that. I prefer to stay angry and full of vitriolic hatred [/quote]
MrsBobDylan I understand your preference, althoughmust admit I had an unsettling moment some years ago on this point. I was reading a history of the Mitford sisters (yes, I know) and there was a bit where Nancy, the eldest, described lying in bed in her apartment in Paris and mentally rehashing all the things her mother had done badly in their childhood. Nancy was 63 at the time of this letter. I remember that shook me, the idea of spending another 25-30 years being really viscerally angry at something that couldn't be changed. I'm not saying it made a difference to my feelings about my mother, but it was an eye-opening thought.

Again, my sympathy to everyone who goes through the card-buying ordeal every year....

[Carbara]

‘Mum, everything I am is because of you’
Perfect! She loves giving passive aggressive cards, so this suits and is 100% accurate. My PTSD, mental health damage and body destroyed by cortisol and adrenaline because of her behaviour choices.
Didn’t buy it coz it said ‘mum’ and only posh twats say that here.

[SenecaTrewe]

Yeah.

I have a tricky relationship with my mother.

I'm just working on trying to be sort of mother my DD will happily send one of those cards to.

[SunshineCake]

[quote MrsBobDylan]@SunshineCake the truth is there are people who think giving birth allows a woman to repeatedly fail her child but still be forgiven. And that forgiveness is is the 'right' choice if we want to heal and move on.

Well fuck that. I prefer to stay angry and full of vitriolic hatred [/quote]


I'm confused, upset, pissed off, sad and disbelieving of her behaviour as I'd do anything for my kids and they would never ever come before a bloke.

[MrsBobDylan]

@SunshineCake the truth is there are people who think giving birth allows a woman to repeatedly fail her child but still be forgiven. And that forgiveness is is the 'right' choice if we want to heal and move on.

Well fuck that. I prefer to stay angry and full of vitriolic hatred

[3CCC]

My mum is not a soppy sort of person and I'm that sort of daughter

I've been 2 supermarkets in the last few days and I would need a bucket for 97% of the cards. 2% were very much the opposite. 1% was nice middle ground of nice card not a rhyme or frothy sentiment in sight.

I found it easier to get a card from her dog than me

[MsLumley]

Same here OP. My brother and I have an annual rant about the impossibility of finding Mother’s Day cards which aren’t gushing and full of false sentiment. We both love our mother but I can’t send her a card saying ‘you’re always there for me’ when she very much isn’t.

[SunshineCake]

Thank you @AnyFucker. I know how wise you are from many other posts so I will take your reply and live it .

It is better for me to keep her out of my life as the risk of her hurting me is too much against the minute chance she has changed. Much as I want a mum. I can't risk it.

[AnyFucker]

They haven’t lived your life @SunshineCake

Be glad for them that they can never understand. But you must live your life as you see fit.

[SunshineCake]

@ContessaDiPulpo you are pretty spot on.

Luckily I have a lady in my life who used to take me out as a child and has never forgotten me and has embraced me and my children since I found her again about eight years ago. She's the one getting gifts on Sunday.

What is really hard to deal with is where I was settled as a child the woman who gave birth to me ruined it time and time again so I as to move/stopped adoption but where I was miserable as was being neglected, beaten and abused so stayed well away and just left me there. Yet I'm so worried people will think I'm mean to ignore her

[ContessaDiPulpo]

@DropDTuning

I don't know if any of that makes sense, but here we are... the best I've been able to come up with in terms of heartfelt over the past few years is 'I sometimes wish you weren't dead'. That's a sad state of affairs really, isn't it.

It is sad, but you are very funny and you have an excellent way with words.

I have a reasonably good relationship with my parents (ish - usually!) but am estranged from both of my siblings which means my kids have never even met their first cousins. For some reason it's really getting to me today. My parents have a big anniversary coming up and we will never have one of those huge family gatherings with all the grandparents, children, grandchildren et cetera. Ugh to all of it.

Thank you DropDTuning, that is kind of you to say

I'm sorry about your siblings, that sounds rubbish

[ContessaDiPulpo]

@SunshineCake

I'm wondering where I fit in having read more of these posts. Many of you have had your mums as children then as you have got older have realised she wasn't a good mum or even adequate in some cases. It can't be comparable but I wonder if it is harder as you have lost something you did have. (I don't mean kind mums who have diet). I didn't have the woman who gave birth to me looking after me once I was two but then I never had anyone else for my mum either.

Then 25 years later the woman is sending notes blaming me for not wanting to have contact. I feel shit about it and it isn't fair as I did nothing wrong.

I have struggled with almost every Mother's Day and my eldest is nineteen. This year I am going to try really hard to remember I am the mum in the Mother's Day and ignore the fact I don't have one.

Sunshine that does sound like a hard situation. I would imagine you might feel sadness at not having a (ideally kind) relationship with a mother at all, but also resentment at being guilted due to your refusal to accept a crappy fascimile of a relationship with said mother. You might also feel some of the guilt she (and possibly others) are trying to unfairly load on you.

If my guesses above are correct, then I can say I've felt some variation on all of them. I did also feel a small bit of genuine sadness when mine died, because there were times, sometimes, when she was ok; or at least when her reasons for not being ok were rather more understandable and forgivable.

I do envy the people who say 'Ah but it's your mum though' and genuinely seem nonplussed at any other point of view. They don't realise that they've got/ had something lovely, but I'm glad for them that they did. Wish I'd had it too but there you go!!