Mother's Day Archives - Gateway Women

Getting through Mother’s Day as a Childless Woman

March 18, 2023 Jody Day 0

UK and Ireland have their version of ‘Mothers Day’ (it’s called ‘Mothering Sunday’) on March 19th 2023. With International Mother’s Day coming up in May, we hope this helps you too. Both of the recording below were offered from our hearts in the hope that by sharing the strategies that we’ve each developed over the years, we can help you to naviage the complex emotions and triggering situations of this very multi-layered holiday with more ease. As this is one of the most difficult days of the year for many childless not by choice women, over the years we have […]

Salt Water & Honey by Lizzie Lowrie: a powerful new memoir of childlessness and faith

February 28, 2020 Jody Day 0

Lizzie Lowrie is a Christian clergyman’s wife in the UK and one of the writers behind the popular, frank and earthy Christian blog about miscarriage and involuntary childlessness, Salt Water & Honey. Although what remained of my own childhood Christianity was eviscerated by the grief of childlessness, my spirituality survived and has returned to what was there before Sunday School – a deep sense of connection to the natural world; but that was hard-won too as there was a time when even that felt denied to me, exiled as I sensed I was from the natural cycles of birth and […]

Getting through Mother’s Day as a childless woman

March 11, 2018 Jody Day 8

“Mother’s Day” – the two words that signal the most dreaded time of the year after Christmas when you’re grieving childlessness. For UK readers, Mother’s Day falls today on Sunday 11th March although, thanks to social media, we get to experience it all over again when international Mother’s Day happens in May… I was interviewed at length for an article which was published today in the The Observer about being childless on Mother’s Day. One of the questions really made me think was this: “Does the notion of Mother’s Day upset/anger/depress you?” I thought about it and although whilst I was […]

Mother is a verb, not just a noun

March 26, 2017 Jody Day 8

This is the text from an address I gave at St Martin’s in the Fields Church, Trafalgar Square, London on Mothering Sunday, 2016. I was so very moved to be asked to contribute OUR voice to this service, which was broadcast live on BBC Radio 4. This is very tender day for so many of us who mourn the children we’ll never know, and have maybe lost our own mothers too. Be gentle with yourself today. And maybe buy YOURSELF the flowers – you deserve them too! Love, Jody x Mother’s in our Hearts Besides Christmas, Mother’s Day (what is […]

Honouring Your Childlessness on Mother’s Day

March 13, 2015 Jody Day 33

In the UK, we celebrate Mother’s Day as “Mothering Sunday”, three Sundays before Easter and so this coming Sunday. It was originally a day when all domestic servants were given a coordinated day off so that they could visit their families and together attend a service at their “Mother” church. It was a family day. However, gradually that original meaning has been lost and has been overtaken by the “Mother’s Day” first introduced in the US by Anna Jarvis in 1914 and falling on the second Sunday in May. Interestingly, Anna Jarvis was childless and the scope of her Mother’s Day also […]