Mother’s Day 2026: It’s Complicated

Love, Loss, Legacy—and the Stories We Don’t Always Tell

There will be flowers.

There will be brunch reservations, greeting cards chosen with care (or at the last minute), and advertisers will relentlessly remind us to “celebrate Mom.” Last year alone, Americans spent an estimated $34.1 billion on Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day is a retail juggernaut! Photo by Edgar Baltazar on Unsplash

That number tells one story. But it is not the whole story.

For many women, Mother’s Day doesn’t fit neatly inside a vase or a greeting card. It arrives carrying more than celebration. It brings memory, grief, gratitude, regret, and sometimes silence.

Mother’s Day is, for many of us, complicated.

I had my mother for 62 years. She was my best friend, my greatest champion, the person who knew my story almost as well as I did. I know that kind of relationship is a gift—not a given. On Mother’s Day, my gratitude is part of the legacy of a woman who still influences my life.

Mom and me—on a trip somewhere. Making memories.

Not everyone comes to this day with that kind of memory.

For some, there is the ache of a mother lost too soon—or a relationship that never became what it needed to be. For others, it is the quiet grief of infertility, or the life that unfolded differently than planned. There are women who made the deliberate choice not to become mothers and still navigate a culture that too often treats that choice as something requiring explanation.

There are stepmothers building love and trust in spaces that don’t come with clear scripts. Mothers caring for children with serious illnesses. Mothers estranged from their children. Daughters estranged from their mothers.

There are also women who mother in ways that aren’t formally named—through mentorship, friendship, caregiving, and community.

And yet, the cultural message remains remarkably narrow.

Celebrate. Be grateful. Smile for the photo.

Forced smiles and hidden feelings. Photo by Sydney Latham on Unsplash

But even beyond personal experience, there are harder truths that don’t make it into the greeting cards. The United States continues to have the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations. Motherhood here can come with real risk—especially for women whose stories are already underrepresented and underserved.

That reality sits uneasily beside spa packages and prix fixe menus.

Which makes it worth remembering: Mother’s Day didn’t begin as a commercial holiday.

It began as something totally different.

In the years following the Civil War, Ann Reeves Jarvis organized “Mother’s Friendship Days,” bringing together women from both sides of a divided nation, Union and Confederacy, to care for one another and begin the slow work of healing.

Julia Ward Howe envisioned the day to honor and support mothers who lost sons and husbands to the Civil War. Howe was an abolitionist, poet, and author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

A few years later, in 1870, Julia Ward Howe—a poet, an activist, and a mother—issued what she called a “Mother’s Day for Peace.” She envisioned women, especially mothers, rising together to oppose war and violence. Her call wasn’t for celebration. It was for action. It was a call for moral leadership.

Somewhere along the way, that origin story softened. Then it blurred. Then it was commercialized.

What remains is a day that still asks something of us—maybe it isn’t about what the advertisers and marketers are selling.

Maybe Mother’s Day isn’t just about celebration.

Maybe it’s about acknowledgment.

About telling the truth of our experiences—whatever they are. About making space for the woman who is grieving, the one who is relieved, the one who is questioning, the one who is remembering, the one who is redefining what “mothering” even means.

This year, I want to thank my aunt—86, and turning 87 in November—who began editing this blog with me in February. She embodies what Older, Bolder & Better is all about. She reminds me that our contributions don’t expire as we age.

The 80+ population is expected to double in 20 years and have 15 million in the U.S.

I remind her, that she is part of one of the fastest-growing—and most powerful—demographics in the world.

So yes, there will be flowers and brunch.

But there can also be honesty.

There can be room for the full Mother’s Day story—the beautiful parts, the painful parts, and everything in between.

For many of us, Mother’s Day is rarely simple.

It’s layered. It’s personal. It’s complicated.

Thank you for reading. What are your observations about Mother’s Day? Please comment and share this post with someone you know. I appreciate you!