For my first Mother’s Day I was blissfully in the ‘keeping it a secret’ of my second pregnancy. My husband and I had decided to enjoy the time and we would tell people in a few more weeks, we had our 12 week scan and all was looking well, which to us was such a milestone, having experienced a miscarriage 5 months before. My husband bought me a pregnancy pillow and what would be the first of ‘mum’ cards. We celebrated the day with a homemade lunch at ours with my mother in law. While I was preparing for my first secret Mother’s Day, blissfully pregnant and imagining a future with our baby, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to make a lemon meringue pie from scratch for the first time.

It turned out really well, I was pleasantly surprised and made it my secret tradition that from then on we’d always have lemon meringue pie on Mother’s Day, a pudding worthy of all the fuss and special enough for a celebration. I had set the table with pink flowers and bunny decorations, not knowing how significant these would be in the future, little reminders of our perfect girl.

Fast forward one year and I found myself 6 months on from the passing of my first born, unsure how to navigate a day where I didn’t see how I quite fit. My identity as a mother is clear to me but so much of Mother’s day seems to focus on the parts of motherhood that I wasn’t able to yet enjoy or participate in. Yet in many ways I felt I had sacrificed, understood unconditional love and grown more than I ever would have if my experiences of the first 6 months of being a mother had been more typical.

As with many parts of my grief I’d established that while there were many losses and ones still to come, celebrating Mother’s Day didn’t need to be one of them. While the world may give the impression that it’s best to avoid and not think about so much, I knew it was a part of my experience that I wanted to keep and not just endure, but celebrate.

I was clear with my husband, I wanted it to be as ‘traditional’ as possible, with all the elements that we felt were right without our daughter here. He lovingly set up a breakfast with thoughtful and classic Mother’s Day gifts, perhaps twee when you’ve had years of them but for me, an absolute dream come true. Flowers, treats and a mug with ‘Mum’ on it, something that celebrated my identity as Astrid’s mum in a way that not only I saw but also showed the world too. I was just as much of a mum, no asterisk or caveat needed, just ‘Mum’.

It felt a powerful move to choose to celebrate Mother’s Day in this way. After navigating months of heavy grieving and taking influence from how others felt it was appropriate to acknowledge ‘a not very neat’ motherhood, this was one way of taking it back for me. We had a cosy day at home with smiles and tears, reflecting on our wild path to parenthood and the joy our daughter continues to bring into our life. We visited a special place to our family and enjoyed lemon meringue pie, because it’s a tradition.