I Won't Celebrate Mother's Day - Her View From Home

A Gift for Mom! 🤍

Mother’s Day. I won’t celebrate this holiday. Not if I’m celebrating it without you. All of you women.

Can I tell you a story? My daughter was just a baby. We attended a Wednesday morning Bible study. A new girl came to Bible study this particular day. She seemed a little sad. Like the days were hard on her. As we settled in, she shared a part of her story. Just a few short months before, she’d had a little girl too. Her second child. Her pregnancy was progressing as normal. And then it wasn’t. Her baby was diagnosed with Trisomy 18. Kari gave birth to Kylie on August 18th, 2007. Her daughter lived for 32 minutes.

That day at Bible study, Kari still carried all the pain of her loss. She’d come to Bible study hoping to find some peace from our Great Comforter. She wasn’t sure it would work, but she bravely gave it a try. After sharing her story, Kari turned to me. My own daughter, only a few months old, was chatting contentedly. Kari turned to me, tears in her eyes.

“Do you mind if I hold your baby?”

And our daughter went on her first mission trip that day. I handed her to Kari. She snuggled into her arms. And a little bit of healing took place. That day, I learned the term “angel baby.” An infant child who proceeds his or her parents in death. A baby that barely breathes the air of this earth at all.

A few years down the road, another friend. Cody lost her little boy to SIDS at three months old. Emotions indescribable. A path I cannot imagine. One Wednesday night, December 14th to be exact, would have been Chris’s birthday. Now, through these amazing, brave women, I’d learned one way to honor a memory, to keep from forgetting, was to celebrate their special events. So, that night at Bible study, we had a party. We had cupcakes in Chris’s honor and we sang Happy Birthday.

These women, my friends, still celebrate Mother’s Day. They have other children. A boy. A girl. Kari gave birth to a beautiful little girl a few short years after losing Kylie. She gave her daughter the middle name Faith.

I see them use their grief to God’s glory. Kari ministers to other parents of angel babies through a support group at a local hospital. She is also part of our church’s care ministry. Cody is choosing a new path for her family. One of faith. She misses Chris like crazy every day but she is letting God guide her steps.

Faith is best done in community. I will never forget Kari holding my little baby. I will always treasure the night we sang Happy Birthday to Chris.

I can’t wait to meet their angel babies one day.

Alongside my sisters, I don’t celebrate Mother’s Day without remembering. Those who have lost little babies. Those whose own mothers have passed before them. Single ladies and those without babies of their own. Some waiting for adopted little ones. Those whose babies are off serving our country. All sharing the mothering role within the church with the rest of us.

I’ll celebrate Mother’s Day with you. But only if these women celebrate with us.

This article was originally posted on Traces Of Faith

So God Made a Grandmother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Order Now!

mom mothers day parenting

Traci Rhoades

Traci Rhoades is a writer and Bible teacher. She lives in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area with her family and an ever-changing number of pets. Connect with her online at tracesoffaith.com or @tracesoffaith on twitter. She is the author of "Not All Who Wander (Spiritually) Are Lost."

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

In: Grief

Woman with mother smiling in older photo

Recently, whenever I look in the mirror, I see a strong resemblance to my mother. People always said I looked like her, but I never really saw it until now. I think it may be because you always think of your parents as being older than you are. At the age of 61, I am now only two years away from the age my mother was when she died. The only good thing about dying young is that everyone will remember you that way. I have only known my mom as the vibrant, personable, and active woman she was. Well,...

Keep Reading

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood

Editor’s note: This post discusses child loss Child loss changes Mother’s Day. My 19-month-old, Julia, died suddenly on Mother’s Day in 2024. Three months later, her autopsy revealed she had B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (B-ALL, also known as SUDNIC). Julia died a week after we did an embryo transfer at an IVF clinic in an attempt to have a second child. We found out three days after Julia’s death that the embryo did not make it either. Six months later, we did another embryo transfer that succeeded, and I now have an 8-month-old daughter, Lucy Mei (“Mei Mei” means “little...

Keep Reading

I Miss Having Parents

In: Grief

Grown daughter posing between smiling parents

I have been living with the ache of loss for so long that I truly don’t remember what it feels like not to carry it. Sometimes it rests quietly beneath my ribs, dormant and almost polite. Other times it rises without warning—on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of a coffee line—and cuts straight through me. Today, it was a song. I was waiting for my coffee when “Pictures of You” by The Cure drifted through the café speakers. I hadn’t heard it in 20 years. In my twenties, it meant heartbreak—young love unraveling, relationships ending before they were...

Keep Reading

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

In: Grief

Nobody tells you that when you lose a sibling, your entire childhood flashes before your eyes. There’s no better witness to what you experienced growing up than that one person who was standing nearby for all of it. And when they’re gone, a part of that childhood and a part of that story goes with them, because it was only ever known between the two of you. There’s no last chance to say, “Remember when?” or to laugh about the things that made you laugh to tears together, a million times at the kitchen table. There’s no last conversation about...

Keep Reading

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

In: Grief

I survived losing my father after his long, grueling battle with cancer. It was one of the most difficult seasons of my life. I had a front row seat to watch cancer pick him apart piece by piece. When you lose a parent, you lose a part of yourself. They say time heals all wounds, but you never stop missing the good ones, and there are days when it feels like it just happened. By the grace of God, I survived, but I will always miss my father. Then, almost a decade later, I lost the career that helped me...

Keep Reading

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

In: Grief

During the weeks we cared for my grandmother in hospice, survival mode felt necessary. There were medications to track. Visitors to update. Logistics to manage. I remember sitting on the couch that served as my makeshift bed and listening to the rhythmic hissing and puffing of the oxygen machine one night. While my mom showered off the day, I texted my sister updates and sent my husband a quick message of love. I could still smell the lavender candle we had lit earlier in the day to mask medical scents. The house was quiet, but my mind wasn’t. I was...

Keep Reading

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

In: Grief

Woman's hands holding beautifully wrapped small gift

It has been two months and nine days since my mom passed away. The first several weeks were spent on the details and logistics of planning her service. She passed in December, so once her beautiful service had passed, I busied myself with the preparations for Christmas. By mid-February, I finally began to process some feelings of grief on a deeper level. The quiet of this less-busy season is allowing the grief to soak in a bit more. Not the big things; not the obvious, grief-heavy reminders that stop me in my tracks. Instead, I’ve been noticing the small things....

Keep Reading

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

In: Grief

It’s been 10 years since I last heard my mother’s voice. Ten years since I could pick up the phone and ask a question I already knew the answer to, just to hear her say it anyway. Ten years since someone loved me in that very specific, unconditional, occasionally annoying way that only a mother can. My mom died in 2015. And while “passed away” sounds softer, more polite, the truth is that she left. Suddenly. Permanently. With no forwarding address. She was gone. What I’ve learned in the decade since is not what I expected. I thought the biggest lesson...

Keep Reading

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

In: Grief, Marriage

The year 2025 began as a quiet storm. I was slipping into the fog of depression while navigating the early chaos of perimenopause, and some days simply getting out of bed felt impossible. My thoughts felt dark and heavy, my body unfamiliar, my energy nonexistent, and my moods uncontrollable. And yet, in the haze, there was one constant: my husband. He noticed the subtle shifts I barely acknowledged. The sighs, the quiet retreats into myself, the moments I almost broke. Instead of judgment or frustration, he offered presence. He held space for my struggle without trying to “fix” it, and...

Keep Reading

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

In: Grief

Becoming a mother has a way of bringing old wounds back to the surface, even ones you believed had healed. I never imagined grief would surface so strongly in my motherhood journey. I thought it was something you carried silently, something that faded with time. But becoming a mother felt like my loss rising to its feet and saying, I’m still here There are moments when I reach for my phone to call my mom, only to be met with the reminder that I can’t. I want to ask her if what I’m feeling is normal, if the exhaustion softens,...

Keep Reading

The Unseen Threat on the Playground

Kids

The Unseen Threat on the Playground

Playing Chicken: A Marriage on the Brink of the End

Journal

I Won’t Celebrate Mother’s Day

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Traci Rhoades

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

I Miss Having Parents

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

Get It Now

So God Made a Mother

I Won’t Celebrate Mother’s Day

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

I Miss Having Parents

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

Previous Post

Next Post

You May Also Like