Photo by Gaspar Zaldo

What Your Mother’s Day Feelings Are Really Telling You

Mother’s Day is over. The flowers are wilting, the brunch reservations are a memory, and the Instagram posts have mostly faded from your feed. But something might still be lingering — a low hum of disappointment, a quiet resentment, or maybe just a vague sense that the day didn’t quite land the way you hoped.

That lingering feeling? Don’t rush past it. It’s trying to tell you something important.

This week on The School of MOM podcast, we’re closing out our three-part Mother’s Day series with a post-holiday reflection — one that’s less about what happened on Sunday and more about what it revealed. Because if Mother’s Day brought up any charge, pressure, or resentment for you this year, that’s not something to brush off. That’s actually the gift.

The Woman Who Tried to Cancel Mother’s Day

Before we get into the reflection, here’s a piece of history that might reframe the whole holiday for you.

Modern Mother’s Day was established by Anna Jarvis in the early 20th century and became a national observance in the United States in 1914. Her original vision was intimate and intentional — a day for personal reflection and quiet family connection, honoring the journey of motherhood.

What happened next is both fascinating and a little heartbreaking. By 1920, Jarvis was already growing disillusioned as florists, card companies, and retailers rapidly commercialized her holiday. She spent the rest of her life — and her entire fortune — campaigning to abolish the very day she had created, calling the commercialized gifts a desecration of its original intent.

Today, Mother’s Day is a $25 billion commercial holiday. Jewelry. Flowers. Spa packages. Greeting cards.

And somewhere in all of that, the original invitation — to pause, to reflect, to honor — got buried.

This matters, because you get to reclaim it. You get to decide what this day means in your family, on your terms. You don’t owe Hallmark anything.

The Real Reason Mother’s Day Feels Heavy

Here’s the reframe that changes everything: being triggered by Mother’s Day is almost never really about Mother’s Day.

A mom in The School of MOM community said it perfectly this week: “I’m only triggered by Mother’s Day when I feel burned out or I’m not making time for myself.”

Yes. Exactly that.

When there’s a lot of pressure riding on one day — when you need it to be nourishing, to feel appreciated, to finally get a moment to exhale — it’s usually because those needs aren’t being met consistently outside of that one day a year. The holiday becomes a pressure valve for everything that’s been building up underneath.

And resentment, as the saying goes, is just expectations waiting to happen. If you came into Mother’s Day with a long list of what you needed and hoped for, and it didn’t go that way, the resentment isn’t really about your partner forgetting the reservations or your kids being difficult. It’s a signal. It’s your nervous system waving a flag and saying: these needs aren’t getting met, and we need to talk about that.

That’s the gift. Not a comfortable one — but a real one.

The Post-Mother’s Day Reflection That Actually Matters

So here’s the invitation, now that the day has passed:

How did it feel? Not the highlight reel version — the honest one. Was there ease? Was there disappointment? Did you feel full, or did you feel like you were waiting for someone to finally see you?

Sit with that. Awareness is always the first step.

Then ask yourself: How do I want to feel this time next year?

Not just on the day itself, but in the days around it. The week leading up. The morning of. The evening after. What would it feel like to move through that whole stretch without resentment, without pressure, without the weight of unmet needs?

And then — the most important question: What needs to shift between now and then?

What parts of you need tending? What boundaries need to be built — not just declared, but actually held? What needs to be prioritized consistently, week after week, between now and next May? And what kind of support do you need to actually get there?

This is the real work. Not the one-day-a-year work. The every-day-in-between work.

What It Looks Like on the Other Side

For what it’s worth — Mother’s Day has become mostly just another day. A good one, but not a loaded one. Not because the needs disappeared, but because they stopped waiting for one day a year to be met. A solo walk isn’t a Mother’s Day request anymore; it’s just Tuesday. Flowers in a vase aren’t a grand gesture; they’re a regular, ordinary joy.

That’s the destination. A life full enough that Mother’s Day is a bonus, not a barometer.

And if you’re not there yet — if this year’s Mother’s Day stirred something uncomfortable — that discomfort is pointing you somewhere worth going.You don’t have to figure it out alone. Radical Flourishing doors are opening at the end of May, and it’s the container where this kind of deep, sustained work actually happens. If something came up for you this week, this might be your next step. Learn more HERE.