Your child joins your life.
You don't join theirs.

My husband had been dead for four months when I saw Mother's Day on the calendar. I knew immediately I was not staying home. I was not going to sit in San Diego and watch everyone else get celebrated by their intact families on social media while I figured out what this holiday meant now. Hawaii had been an annual spring trip before my son. I booked a flight to Maui before I could think too hard about it. My mother decided to come. I didn't ask her to — she just said she was