The day after Mother's Day, I want to talk to you.
Not to the version of you who posted the beautiful family photo. To the version of you who closed the app and sat with the quiet for a minute. The version who had a good day AND a hard day, both in the same twelve hours. The version who laughed and cried and maybe stepped outside for a minute alone just to breathe.
Mother's Day is the most public holiday and the most private one at the same time. We perform it — the brunch, the flowers, the cards, the social media. And underneath the performance are the real things: the grief that doesn't take holidays. The children you are missing. The mother you have lost. The pregnancy that didn't continue. The relationship with your own mother that is complicated or broken or gone. The years of doing this job with no backup and no applause and no one to send you a tray.
I have sat with all of those. I carry them with me into every Mother's Day.
I have a daughter who cannot call me. I have made my peace with the reality that until she is found, Mother's Day will always hold a candle alongside the celebration. I light it. I say her name. I pray. I don't explain it to people who haven't earned the explanation. I just carry it quietly and I keep moving because that is what you do.
I want you to know — if you had a complicated Mother's Day — that the complication does not mean you did it wrong. It means you are human and alive and carrying real things. You showed up. You got through the day. You loved who you could love in the ways you could love them.
That counts. All of it counts.
The candle I light for Kassandra is also a candle for every mother who sat in the quiet yesterday and felt something they didn't have words for. You are not alone in that room. A lot of us are in there with you.
Buckle up, buttercup. The quiet after the holiday is sacred too. Let yourself sit in it.