Mother's Day is heavy for a lot of women. This one's for them.

Mother's Day gets held up like it belongs to everyone. Like it's universally joyful, universally simple, universally something to post about. And for some people it is. But for a lot of women, more than we ever actually talk about, it's one of the harder days of the year.

So I want to sit with that for a minute. Instead of rushing past it.

And I also want to say this first: you're allowed to feel more than one thing this weekend. You're allowed to love your kids and feel completely depleted at the same time. You're allowed to feel grateful and grieving in the same afternoon. You're allowed to celebrate something and still carry a quiet ache underneath it. It doesn't have to be Instagram-perfect. It doesn't have to be one clean feeling. Real life is messier than that, and that's not a problem with you. That's just what it is to be human.

This day is heavy in so many different ways.

For the woman who has been trying to become a mom and isn't there yet. Who scrolls through the brunch photos and the flower posts and feels something she can't quite name, part grief, part longing, part wondering if something is wrong with her for feeling this way. There isn't.

For the mom whose relationship with her child is strained. Who loves them deeply and also finds that love complicated, painful, or one-sided right now. Who isn't getting a card today, or hasn't spoken to her kid in months. Who is grieving a version of motherhood she hoped for and doesn't have.

For the woman who lost a baby, to miscarriage, to stillbirth, to an early loss that the world told her to move past before she was ready. Who carried a life, even briefly, and whose arms still remember it. She is a mother. Full stop.

For the mom who has lost a child. Who is living in a grief with no clean edges, no timeline, no end. For whom today is less a celebration and more a reminder of who is missing from the table.

For the woman who wasn't sure she wanted to be a mom and still isn't. Who feels pressure to perform gratitude for a role she didn't fully choose, or who chose it and still finds herself in the complicated middle of it, where love and ambivalence sit side by side.

For the mom who wanted more children and didn't get to have them. Who loves the kids she has and still carries a quiet ache for the family she pictured. Who doesn't feel like she's allowed to grieve something she technically has.

For the woman who grew up without a mother, or with one who hurt her. Who finds today complicated in a completely different way, navigating everyone else's definition of what this day is supposed to mean.

For the woman who has lost her mother and is moving through today carrying that. Who is watching everyone celebrate something she no longer has, or never had in the way she needed. Grief doesn't follow a schedule. And this day has a way of making it fresh.

All of this is real. All of it belongs here.

Grief doesn't ask for permission. It shows up on the hard days and the celebratory ones, sometimes at the same time. And the thing nobody tells you is that it doesn't mean you're not okay. It means you loved something, or wanted something, deeply enough to feel its absence.

If today is one of the heavy ones, your nervous system is probably working overtime right now. Hard emotions are physical. They live in the body, not just the mind. So if you're feeling wound up, or shut down, or somewhere in between, here are a few small things that can actually help bring you back to yourself.

Put cold water on your face or wrists. It sounds too simple, but cold water activates your body's dive reflex and genuinely slows your heart rate. It's not a metaphor. It works.

Try breathing out longer than you breathe in. Inhale for four counts and exhale for six or eight. The extended exhale tells your nervous system it's safe to come down. Even two or three rounds makes a difference.

Get low and slow if you can. Sit on the floor. Let your back be against something solid, a wall, a couch, something that holds you. Your nervous system reads physical support as safety.

Name what you're feeling out loud, even just to yourself. "I'm sad and I'm also angry and I'm also tired." Research shows that naming an emotion actually reduces its intensity. It doesn't fix it. But it takes some of the charge out.

Step outside for five minutes, not to exercise, not to clear your head, just to feel the air. Notice one thing you can see, one you can hear, one you can feel on your skin. That's it. That's enough.

You don't have to fix the feeling. You just have to let your body know it's not in danger.

You don't have to perform happiness today. You don't have to post anything. You don't have to be okay with how things are. You're allowed to feel exactly what you feel, all of it, at once, without it needing to look like anything in particular.

And if you're carrying something you've never really had space to work through, that's exactly what I'm here for.

I work with women navigating all of it. The motherhood that's harder than expected. The grief that doesn't fit the expected shape. The weight of being a woman in a world that has a lot of opinions about what you should feel and how you should look while you're feeling it.

You don't have to keep holding this alone. If you're ready to have someone sit with you in it, really sit with you, I'd be honoured to be that person. Book a free 20-minute call at marlodrago.com. No pitch, no pressure. Just a conversation.

Sending you gentleness today, whatever this day holds.

Marlo Registered Social Worker | Trauma Therapist | marlodrago.com