“Let me tell you why I’m not celebrating Mother’s Day.”

We speak to those women for whom Mother's Day isn't all breakfast in bed and hand-drawn cards.

For many, Mother’s Day is pretty predictable. There’s breakfast in bed, or maybe a hand-drawn card or, in my case, an IOU for a present because once again I forgot (and my sister never lets me put my name to hers).

For some, though, Mother’s Day is a day they’d prefer not to be reminded of at all. It’s a day that reminds them that life is far from predictable.

“I became a mother in September 2009, my son passing away just an hour after taking his first breath. When my first Mother’s Day rolled around eight months later, I was drowning in a thick haze of grief overlaid with the pain and trauma of infertility. The next five Mother’s Days were a lonely reminder of the loss I had experienced and what my body was incapable of achieving … In 2015, I adopted my daughter while living in the country of my origin, India. Last year I chose not to celebrate our first Mother’s Day together as the day still unravels a raft of emotions for me. The only saving grace is that I know I’m not alone,” writes Rakhee Ghelani for SBS.

It’s a private kind of grief, too. Almost invisible to anyone but the person wading through it and those in their wake. An oddly taboo topic; miscarriage and grief. And actor, writer, filmmaker and mother Tahyna Macmanus has been incredibly open about hers. After three miscarriages, she set about her own loss – making a documentary in an effort to open up the conversation around miscarriage. One woman we spoke with showed me the post below, it had been sent to her after she’d lost twins – and almost her life – to a heterotopic pregnancy.

@tahynamacmanus

“I am 1 in 4. This is a tricky one that took me a while to share - on one hand I am overjoyed at our impending arrival and on the other hand thinking of the 3 little lives that didn’t make it this far. On this day in particular - Pregnancy and Infant Loss Day - I think of all those little ones and the women and families who had to endure the tragedy of miscarriage. I began documenting my experience on film in an effort to shatter the shame and stigma associated with miscarriage and loss. Thank you to those who have shared their experience with me so far.”

I have friends who are mums, who have lost mums and who have lost out on the chance to be a mum. It’s hard for them to talk about – especially this time of year. And those who don’t get along with their mums, and who have struggled to do so since forever. But it’s not just them: research published in Social Inclusion journal shows – not that it needed to – that even women who don’t have kids by choice feel left out. Their clock, they’re told, is ticking. And, even for those who are mums and have their mums, it can be a hard day.

In writing this piece, we spoke to a lot of women, and asked them to share how they felt about Mother’s Day.

I want to, but I don’t know if I will ever have kids.
“Every time I go to the doctor, they ask if want my eggs tested. It doesn’t matter if I’m there for a flu jab or a repeat on my pill. It’s always the same question. Have I just hit that age bracket or is this some kind of money-making scheme? Every time I say no, I worry that I’m missing out on something. But, really, I’m afraid. What if it comes back with a low count?"

“I’ve never had a scare and that scares me.”

“It’s so hard, in this late-ish 30 years to step away from someone who you know isn’t quite right. I was like, should I stay? But I couldn’t. I just have to hope I will meet someone else.”

I'm trying.
“They told me not to call it ‘trying’ but to call it ‘waiting’. At first that made me feel better but we’ve been waiting for a long time now.”

“I told everyone we were. And now, when they ask, all I can say is ‘not yet’. And every time I say it, I feel like a failure.”

“I’m saving up to do it by myself. That’s hard in Sydney.”

I tried, but I can’t.
A friend of mine had tried for close-on two years. “So, I think we’re going to go and do something different,” she told me over dinner once. “It’s not happening, so maybe it’s not meant to be. Maybe we’ll just move to Berlin!” She isn’t a move-to-Berlin kind of girl, but it was the radical question her and her husband had asked themselves: “if not this, then what?”

Mum is gone.
“Christmas was hard. But I think this [Mother’s Day] is going to be harder.”

“You think you know how a story begins or how it's going to turn out, especially when it's your own,” LA-based author Edan Lepucki wrote recently. “You don't.”

None of us do. And there's some small, frustrating, excruciating, beautiful comfort in that. Be it for this Mother's Day or the ones to come.

Thank you to all the women who shared their time with us.