I don't want to go to Mass on Mother's day

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I know I’m supposed, to, Sunday obligation and all that. But it’s mother’s day, and I just don’t want to sit through another mess of praise for the wonders of mothers. And of course I’ll have to go to work right after Mass when I’d much rather go home and have a good stiff drink and a nap or something.

It just comes across as the same old, you’re expected to think and feel a certain way about your mother. And if you don’t it means that you are ungrateful. Meanwhile I’m over here walking on eggshells around my mother. I don’t have a lot of happy memories, but I also don’t have much specific that I could point to and say there, that was bad. I try to limit how much time I spend around her, because of the emotional cost. I’ve given up on working things out - she seems bound and determined to treat me as a rebellious child who just needs to listen to her mother, and there’s no way to work anything out from there.

I always end up feeling horribly guilty about every celebration of mothers and motherhood, but at the same time I realize there’s just no possible way for me to make that relationship happen in any sort of appropriate manner. I’m just so used to the idea that all good people want to spend time with their mother and make their mother happy, and not doing so makes you a bad person.

Anyone got some good survival tips? I’m going, obviously, but because my shift starts at 11am I don’t get a lot of options on where.
 
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At most parishes I have been to, they generally limit themselves to a blessing of mothers at the end of Mass just before the final blessing. If that brings up bad feelings for you, you could always try distracting yourself at that time by praying a few Our Fathers or something. (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
Find a parish with a Spanish Mass. Or, if you speak Spanish, find a Polish Mass. Problem solved.
 
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Shiftwork - I won’t be off til after the Vigil masses have ended.
 
Not available until too late in the day, sadly. The Spanish mass is not until noon and I start work at 11.
 
DarkLight said:
But it’s mother’s day, and I just don’t want to sit through another mess of praise for the wonders of mothers.
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I have long felt that making a big deal of a secular “holiday” at Mass is a bad idea. I’ve watched women I know who deal with infertility have to get up and leave when they do the “every mom stand up and get roses” part.

There are others who have perhaps a situation like yours.

Nah, have a Mother’s Day themed coffee and donuts after, but, Mass is not a place to torture people.
 
They will still call all of the mothers to stand, get a round of applause or a blessing or a trinket.
 
I’m going to the Saturday evening Liturgy. My mother has been gone almost six years and I still can’t take Mothers Day.
 
Maybe seek somee counseling to help you move beyond these bad feelings.
 
aleteia.org

Dear Priests: This is how to survive Mother’s Day

Dear Father, I wish I had a dollar for every time I've said, "Quit telling priests what to do." You guys are super busy and already working harder than anyone could reasonably expect. But I'll give one of those imaginary dollars back today, because I'm going to tell you what to do this Sunday. Trust
aleteia.org
 
I doubt these sorts of feelings ever completely go away. It’s more like losing someone, only they’re still there, but they’re not there in the right way. And it does sting to feel like you have some big secret that you have to hide, especially as the topic tends to be amazingly hard to avoid. Never got much out of therapy myself, honestly, anyway.

I don’t really mind honoring the mothers who are there. I just don’t like a lot of the rhetoric that mothers are automatically good people for being mothers. And unfortunately I have been to some Catholic Masses that focused entirely on mothers and how wonderful mothers are for being mothers and all their sacrifices as mothers. (To be quite honest, our family would probably have done a touch better with less sacrificing from my mother to begin with.)
 
You are correct, and realistic. The feelings don’t ever go completely away, but how they affect you can. So in other words, a reasonable expectaton could be that you would hear the Mothers’ Day rhetoric and instead of it being painful you would just shake your head and say, “such silliness”, and not really skip a beat.

Counseling can really help you learn how to look at an issue in a way that makes it much easier to manage.

I am sorry Mothers’ Day is so hard for you. I think it is for a lot of people, which doesn’t make it easier for any of them. I hope you are able to do something kind for yourself on that day. Mothers wouldn’t be mothers without their children, so celebrate yourself.

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Heh, I imagine it is rather hard on our priests. We’re down one priest right now too, our poor pastor is running around like his robes are on fire trying to get everything handled. He’s a good man and he’s been quite understanding with the details I’ve mentioned to him in person.
 
I don’t want to go on Mother’s Day either. My mom has been dead for almost 40 years and May is still hard. Her birthday is ths month too. I will go and focus on praying for her.
I don’t know if you’re at a point in your life where you can pray for her at mass. If you are that works for mme.
I still hate the day but I feel good about praying for her. I also use it to honor other people who have been like a mother to me
 
I had a terrible relationship with my mother, too, may she rest in peace. I still have trouble with Mother’s Day for this reason and for others, as well. I focus on our other mothers - our spiritual mothers - such as the Blessed Virgin Mary and ‘mother Church’. I look to their examples. I also pray for the soul of my mother, who probably did the best she could with the resources (internal and external) she had.

Be at peace.
 
I think all the talk about how wonderful mothers are or motherhood is is because the focus is more on honoring the ideal of what motherhood should be. Some moms get close to the ideal and other mother’s fall very, very short of it.

Of course, we have our Blessed Mother who is the ideal.

My husband’s mother was not so great. The best way he handles it is to look at it objectively.
  1. To honor and acknowledge what motherhood should be, which is a striving for the ideal.
  2. To acknowledge and accept that his own mother fell woefully short of that.
  3. To acknowledge and accept his own pain (or anger, or sadness) of missing out on experiencing what it would be like to have had a mother who maybe wasn’t perfect (we’re all flawed) but whose heart was in the right place in always trying to fulfill her role to the best of her abilities.
  4. To pray for his mother and forgive her by acknowledging and accepting that there may have been some experiences in her own life that lead her to the place she is now.
  5. To think about other women in his life (his aunt and grandmother particularly) who were able to give him some experience of what a mother/child relationship is like and to be thankful for that.
 
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