‘I have experienced both the joy and pain of Mother’s Day’

Mother’s Day became painful for Sarah Portal after her mother died when she was 22. Later, she felt the pain of waiting for children via adoption. Now Sarah is a mother, she describes both the pain and the joys of the day. 

Lebanese Poet, Khalil Gibran wrote on the relationship between joy and sorrow that “the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” He goes on to write beautifully about how joy and pain are inseparable and that while the well of sorrow is the new space in which we can contain joy, it is also because we have known great joy that we feel our sorrow so bitterly

Mother’s Day. A beautiful day that celebrates the very origin of life, the vessel through which we are all brought into the world. The first heart beat we ever know. The first voice we ever hear. The first love we ever receive. And it is for this reason that Mother’s Day can be one of the hardest days for so many people.