Today in the UK we celebrate Mothering Sunday. I’m wishing good and lovely things to all you mothers and mothers to be out there. Have a blessed and joy filled day. You are special.

It is not an easy day for many of us, myself included, and I’m holding in mind especially everyone who has lost a mother or a child, or who is far from them, through geographical or emotional distance or irreconcilable hurt. I’m praying for you for comfort and some way to heal the longing, a little bit.

Mothering Sunday is a strange day for me. I am never quite sure what to do as my own relationship with my mother is so broken beyond any possible repair I can see, because of the abuse and her feelings towards me, and because it feels as if what I’ve discovered about her in recent years following the abuse has invalidated any previous attempts at a relationship with her.

I’m very fortunate that I have a caring step-mother and that my dad and she are very happy together and constantly busy, sociable, undertaking new things and many creative projects, all of which never happened in the family when my dad and my mother were together. I have three step-siblings and am slowly building more of a relationship in particular with my step-sister. Also, I am fortunate to have what can feel like a mother in a member of a close friend’s family – when I was very unwell and family life was traumatic, I was welcomed and cared for in their family and that is an amazing gift. I’m thankful.

I think that a loving bond between mother and child is needed by each of us at least at some point in our lives.

Happy Mothering Sunday.

Ginny xxx

• BPD
• Mental Health in families