Muddy Hands, Full Heart: Thoughts on Mother’s Day

This Sunday is Mother’s Day. The shops are full of lavender-scented candles, floral cards with cursive gold lettering, and mugs that say things like Best Mum Ever. But we all know that ain't no hood like motherhood — and this day — is anything but one-size-fits-all.

Motherhood is a many-splendoured, many-snarled thing. Some days it’s messy buns and snuggles, sticky fingers offering you a half-eaten biscuit with a proud grin. Other days, it’s hiding in the laundry room with tears in your eyes and a mouthful of chocolate because your toddler screamed at you for cutting their toast or peeling the banana “the wrong way.” Again.

It’s a daily tightrope walk between worlds — trying to keep a household humming, nurture a business, answer emails, fill lunch boxes, sign excursion notes, put on pants (bonus points if they don’t have clay smudges), and somewhere in there… raise kind, brave, empathetic humans who just might help heal this fractured world.

No pressure, right?

And then there’s Matrescence — the wild, tender, shape-shifting transition into motherhood that no one really warns you about. It’s like adolescence but with fewer hormones and a lot more laundry. It’s the feeling that you’ve become someone else overnight. Like you’ve cracked open, lost your old self somewhere in the nappy aisle, and are fumbling to rebuild a new one with Lego, leftover fish fingers and your own frayed edges. It can last months. Sometimes years. For some of us, it’s still going — a slow unfolding we’re meant to “bounce back” from in six weeks or less, if you believe the magazines. Spoiler: don’t.

There are days when everything feels just a little too loud. Too fast. Too much. The noise of other people's needs. The weight of invisible expectations. The endless to-do list, scrawled in your head, looping on repeat.

And through it all, there's a quiet resentment that creeps in—the kind you're not "supposed" to admit out loud. At your partner, who somehow always gets to pee in peace, while you hover in the doorway—tired, unseen—wondering when you stopped being the thing they looked at like that, before the black mirror took your place. Toward friends who look like they've cracked the code. Toward influencers serenely kneading sourdough at sunrise, while you're just trying to remember when the houseplants (or you) last had a drink.

It leaves you feeling like you're wilting, too—thirsty for rest, for space, for something softer. You end up feeling like you're failing at everything: work, dinner, quality time, emotional availability, intimacy, play, planning, breathing.

But maybe—just maybe—this isn't failure.

Maybe it's the body whispering what the mind won't admit: that you're carrying too much, with too little room to exhale. That the world has told you to keep spinning plates, even when your arms ache.

And maybe the softness you're craving isn't somewhere out there, in a better version of yourself or your home or your to-do list.

Maybe it starts here.
In the pause.
In the tiny, radical act of putting the kettle on for no one but you.
Of letting the laundry wait while you step outside and feel the light on your face.
Of naming the truth, even the messy bits, and letting that be enough.

You are not broken.
You are tired.
And you are worthy of rest, of joy, of mornings that don’t begin in a panic and nights that end without a list.

And yet — and yet — we carry on. With fierce love. With deep hope. With the unwavering belief that what we’re doing matters, even when it feels invisible. Even when no one claps. Even when someone tells you they liked Papa’s dinner better. We keep showing up, muddy hands and all.

Mother’s Day can stir up all of that — the joy, the exhaustion, the longing, the loss. It’s not sunshine and scones for everyone.

So to those who feel tenderness or grief bubbling up this weekend: I see you. Whether you’ve lost your mum, never had the relationship you hoped for, are navigating estrangement, infertility, pregnancy loss, or something else entirely — please know there’s space here for your truth. You don’t have to perform happiness. You don’t have to smile through the ache. You are held.

This Sunday, I’ll be thinking of my own mum — the good, the bad, the lessons learned and unlearned. The things I’ve carried forward and the patterns I’m trying to gently break. The generational baton pass, fumbled and caught. Because part of mothering — I’ve realised — is also re-mothering ourselves. Parenting our own inner child while trying not to traumatise the actual children sitting at the breakfast table, asking for porridge that’s not too hot and not too cold and just right.

Sometimes, mothering means raising children. Sometimes it means reparenting yourself. Most days, it’s both.

So wherever you find yourself this Mother’s Day, I hope you can carve out a moment to breathe. To soften. To hold yourself the way you hold everyone else. Maybe that looks like a hot cuppa in your favourite mug, or time in the garden, or sitting in silence without anyone touching you. (Just for a minute. Truly.)

You deserve that.

And if you’re celebrating someone else this weekend — a mum, a stepmum, a foster carer, a grandmother, a best mate who mothered you through heartbreak — say the words. They matter.

And to all my fellow muddy, magical, imperfect, glorious mummas and mumma-figures out there — keep going. You’re doing holy work. Even when it feels like chaos. Especially then.

With so much love from my little farmhouse to yours.

Until next time,
Nawsheen, your friendly homebody artist from Murrumbateman.