Mother's Day Is Complicated. Here's What Most Women Are Quietly Carrying.

Mother's Day is complicated.

For some, it's a day of celebration. For others, it can be dreaded as one of the hardest days of the year. Maybe you're grieving your mother or maybe you're grieving the chance to be one. Maybe you're estranged or immersed in a relationship for which there is no card. Or perhaps you are a mother pulled in so many different directions that you're depleted and have forgotten what it feels like to feel good.

Mother's Day has historically been hard for me. For years I went into my own bubble and pretended it was just another day. There was a time I deeply wanted to be a mother but wasn't healthy enough to have one, all while navigating a difficult relationship with my own. Whatever this day is for you, I hope you let yourself slow down. Because here is what most women are quietly carrying.

Women Are Quietly Sicker Than Men

About 80% of autoimmune patients are women. We are 1.5 to 3 times more likely to develop IBS. Fibromyalgia,, chronic pain, and migraine all disproportionately affect women.

Our bodies are running quieter alarms all the time, and we keep ignoring them and going anyway. Sometimes because we have so much on our plate, and also because we wouldn't even know where to begin our healing.

Women Carry More of the Daily Load

Outside the body, women still carry more of the daily load. Globally, women do significantly more unpaid labor than men. The cleaning, cooking, laundry, grocery list, and even tracking the emotional temperature of the people around us. Women all over do this, for most of their lives. Most of us do not get a day off, and most do not have the luxury of investing in our own health the way we invest in everyone else's.

What This Has to Do With Non-Toxic Living

Everything, actually.

The cornerstone of this work, at least for me, is reducing what your body has to manage. Your body has a finite capacity. Every input, chemical, physical, emotional, takes up space in that capacity. When you reduce what's going in, your body has more bandwidth for everything else.

"Toxins" are broader than what's under your sink. They include synthetic chemicals, yes, but also chronic stress, poor sleep, draining relationships, the pressure to look and perform a certain way, the comparison loop of social media, suppressed emotions creeping out into your body, and the lack of time to feel what you feel and do all that you need to do. All of it adds to the load.

You cannot remove every input, of course. But you can pull a few out, and awareness is the first step. And in my experience, and in the research, the body responds. Your symptoms ease, your energy returns, and something shifts.

Where to Start

So this Hallmark-appointed Mother's Day, whatever it is for you, take some of it for yourself. Maybe start with stepping outside and grounding yourself on some grass. Get sunlight in your eyes first thing when you wake up. Drink lots of water. Open your windows. Say no to something. Invest in your own health for an hour.

And maybe take a look at the symptoms you've been having, and start making a step by step list of how you are going to get help for them. You matter too.