mother's day - outside the box

Today was Mother's Day and as most of you know, I'm not a mom. At this point in my life, I am very aware that this is an anomaly and it took me years to be okay with that. As much as this is an anomaly though, the weird thing is I have actually wound  up with lots of women in my close circle of family and friends who, due too varying reasons and circumstances, also do not have children. So by all conventional rules, none of us were deemed worthy of celebration on a day like today.

However, the interesting thing about this group of women I know, myself included, is that we have actually found ourselves involved in caring for and helping raise other people's children. We help raise spouses grandchildren and accept a spouses already grown children. We have fostered kids with parents struggling to rebuild and helped sisters and nieces raise their kids.  And we spend time being a much needed arm of support for a newly adopted kiddo. Those of us who never wanted kids or couldn't have kids of our own have actually found that we were needed in other kids and families lives.  And oddly enough discovered that this may be exactly what we were meant to do.

So while many of us spent today celebrating and honoring all the mothers we know, we never once thought twice about not being part of that celebration. But while you can't call us mothers, we have all willingly taken on the struggles of those in great need of a mother figure, figured out ways to help these kids grow and overcome their struggles and learned to become the mother figure to kids not technically ours.

So to all those non-mothers out there...Happy Being a Mother to Others' Kids Day! 

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