Prompts for Motherless Children
To remember your mothers and mother figures today
For those spending Mother’s Day without a mother (figure), whether because of death, incarceration, or estrangement.
(Change the wording, pronouns, and verb tenses as needed.)
What is your mom’s name?
Write about her hands. Were/are they calloused? Soft? Manicured? Scarred? Tattooed? Was she a maker? Did she use her hands with precision?
How did/does she express love?
Fill a page with something that reminds you of your mother figure. Draw, collage, write, do a long math equation or write a good recipe, spray it with her perfume, or anything else that feels right.
Describe your grief that you can’t spend this day together. This could be the physical sensations, through metaphors, color, shape, words, scribbles–anyway you can right now.
How have you spent Mother’s Days in the past? How do you wish you could be spending it today?
If the person you’ve lost is a mother figure, how did they enter your life?
Write a letter to her. How you feel that she’s not here with you, how you feel that you are separated, how things have changed since you’ve last seen her. If your mother isn’t in your life because of how she’s treated you, you can write a letter with the way you wish she would see you, how you wish things could be. This is not a letter that needs to be sent or shared with anyone.
Do something nice for yourself in your mom’s memory as you’re able; brew a cup of coffee or tea she loved, treat yourself to a favorite meal or snack of hers, go to a place she loved to spend time. Find a thread of connection and follow it. Let yourself feel however you need to feel today.
Much Love,
Alekz
P.S. My mom’s name was Treva. (Pronounced like Tree-Vuh) It’s not a name I get to see or hear outside if those who knew her, so if you’d like to speak it today, I’d love that to be in the air. She loved shades of pink, bouquets of flowers, coffee, and had a laugh like singing.
Donate to Mothers who need support to stay with their children the most today:
#FreeBlackMamas link
CareforGaza link
Save the Children, Gaza link
Save the Children, Sudan link
Save the Children, Congo link