What is a mother?

As Bereaved Mother's Day passed last weekend and Mother's Day itself approaches this week I have been thinking about how I feel about the title of Mother for myself.

Was I a mother last year? Is this my first year of mothering or my second?

Most of the discourse I have read on this has been mothers asserting that they want to be thought of as such even if they have no living children. I totally respect and support this for them but last year when my close friends or other loss mamas assured me I was still a mother it didn't feel right. It was actually jarring and upsetting for me. Maybe because it painfully reminded me of my losses at a time where I felt very vulnerable. I felt like I wasn't a mother if I had no one to nurture; I wasn't doing the job as I understood it to be defined. It's like calling a widow a wife, an incomplete description. I had that empty arms ache and I wanted motherhood to be something that felt better than excruciating grief. I felt like there needed to be another category that is not lesser or excluded but specific to someone whose only child died before they got a chance to live.

Now I am definitely a mother by any definition but I still feel like I am something else too. I don't know what that is but now I can say that being the mother of a dead baby is a lot harder than being the mother of a live one. Saersha doesn't need me like Stellan does but I hope that I can honour her in my life some how.

Missing

I am missing you Saersha and I wish you were here. You would be 18 months old today.
I still wince when I see girly things, the knife twisting.
I wish I could see you again, or even feel like it is possible. I wish I could know you.
Your brother is not you and you can't be replaced.