If I really meant this post as true advice, I’d have posted it before Mother’s Day came and went.  So maybe implement this for next year.  However, I sincerely hope if this applies to you that you won’t need this advice by next year.  I hope by then you get your sticky egg and are either pregnant, closing an adoption or already a mother by next Mother’s Day.  I hope that for myself and for all of us in the community.

One thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to do something productive around Mother’s Day.  That was part of the reason I signed up for Shimmy Mob.  If you recall from my post earlier this year, Shimmy Mob happens on World Belly Dance Day every year.  WBDD just so happens to fall on the second Saturday of May:  the day before Mother’s Day.

The spirit of Shimmy Mob also compliments Mother’s Day as we use the surprise flash mob technique to raise awareness and funds for abused and battered women and their children.  I was part of the Baltimore Shimmy Mob, and we chose The House of Ruth as our charity to raise funds for.  Yours truly bribed her co-workers with chocolate for donations.  Hey, it worked.  🙂

On May 11, 2013 my fellow mobsters and I invaded Baltimore’s Federal Hill Park and performed our belly dance choreography for the pleasure of the few folks who happened to be walking their dogs or taking in the fine weather on the Saturday afternoon.

The song is La Musa by La Musa Project off of their album Shine.  And you can just barely see me in the very back toward the right.  No worries, I wanted to be in the back.  LOL!

Afterwards, I went to a late lunch with my fellow mobsters at Little Havana.  If you’re going to visit Baltimore at some point, forget eating at the Inner Harbor.  Head toward Key Hwy. and instead enjoy really great food at the prices locals enjoy.

Chilling out at Little Havana after the
2013 Shimmy Mob with my fellow mobsters.

But that was Saturday.  The day before Mother’s Day.  Not the day of.  And, as I knew I would, I got a little down in the mouth shortly after waking up on Sunday.  There was no reason to wish me a Happy Mother’s Day.  I tried not to let my mind linger in that direction, but my brain led me there anyway.  However, my husband would not let me stay in that head space for long.

Did you know that if you’re not a mother on Mother’s Day, even if you really want to be, that you can instead celebrate Bad A@@ Motherf**ker’s Day?  It was news to me too.  Thankfully, my husband took the time to make up the holiday for me.

According to him, on Bad A@@ Motherf**ker’s Day, you are to eat bagels for breakfast, play video games all day, drink Slurpees and/or beer while doing that and, finally, eat a large and elaborate plateful of nachos for dinner.  And so we did.

Of course, he didn’t say that the caliber of the video game had to be ‘bad a@@.’

All day on Mother’s Day, we laid around the house indulging ourselves.  And it was a great way to spend a day dedicated to mothers when you want to be a mother yourself.  We even followed through all the way to the nachos.

Do these nachos say ‘bad a@@’ to you?

So to sum up, surviving Mother’s Day when you are not yet a mother can be challenging.  I managed it by taking some time to do something for people other than myself by fundraising for The House of Ruth (they are always accepting donations if you are so inclined.)

And then I gave into self-indulgence on the actual day of.  My husband and I created a holiday just for ourselves which he calls Bad A@@ Motherf**ker’s Day.  I just found out it has a theme song.  It even has a music video.  But it’s very explicit and possibly not safe for work.  Also there’s a decent amount of gore.  So if you choose to click on this link to watch the music video, you do so with full knowledge that it is not safe for little eyes or weak hearts.  Otherwise, it’s pretty bad a@@!

P.S. This article from The Boston Globe website gave me some solace on Mother’s Day.  I found it through Keiko Zoll’s (Founder of The Infertility Voice) twitter feed.

[Mother’s Day] so idealizes the
mother-child relationship that
anything less, or different,
feels not good enough–
even though these women are among
the heroes of motherhood.

                                   -Dr. Claire McCarthy