11/05/2025
I won’t pretend I was always the most responsible daughter when it came to Mother’s Day back in Australia. But my Mum never held that against me.
When it was my first Mother’s Day—after Kylo was born, during lockdowns in Australia—she still found a way to celebrate me, even though I was on the other side of the world in México. She scoured the local jewellers for something that said “MUM” (not “MOM”—she was always fierce about Australia having its own identity, not being swallowed up by the US). She bought me a necklace that said ‘yummy mummy’ because that was all that met her prerequisite. I cringed at the time—but now, it’s one of my most prized possessions.
She also got me a card. In it, she wrote: “Congratulations. Happy Mother’s Day, Kylo Fox—Number One Son.”
She loved her grandchildren with a depth and freedom she never had the luxury of when raising her own kids. She worked nights. She parented alone. She was exhausted and burnt out, doing everything she could just to provide for 3 of us.
As a Nanna, she got to be fun—soft, silly, loving. She was no longer surviving, she was finally living. Her relationship with me changed too, because she could relate to me like a mother, like so many patients over 40 years.
It’s my first Mother’s Day with a heavenly mother.
But strangely, I feel her everywhere. And in many ways, as close as I ever did. My first Mother’s Day without Matt as far as ever.
Rather than nostalgic as a daughter, I feel proud as a mother. I’ve always seen her for who she was—strong, gritty, capable—but I never imagined I could be as brave and resilient as she was.
The truth is, I wasn’t… until the unimaginable happened and called the status quo into question.
Watching her fight until the very end made something in me resolute.
To not accept for myself or my children what she wouldn’t have accepted for us. I owed her that!
To overcome my doubts, anchored in her strength.
To carry forward the ferocity that shaped me, and now shapes the way I mother.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mum.
Your legacy’s mine now—in every brave decision I make: you believe I deserved more even if I didn’t, & in the ‘one foot in front of the other’ of single morherhood.
