This piece is anonymously written and is the thoughts of a COA and how they struggled like so many do on Mothers Day. I am sure many will find comfort in this person being able to articulate the ways so many feel on such a day. 

Always remember that Nacoa offer life saving love and compassion to anyone affected by a parents drinking. As always, if you want to share some thoughts as a COA then please do get in touch. 

I’ve spent 15 Mother’s Days without you, and probably not many happy ones with you before that, so when I had a headache for a week before the date, I guessed I was coming down with something, and when I felt as though my batteries had gone flat 3 days before I told myself I definitely had a virus.

On Saturday I walked into town in a daze, helped my son choose a friends birthday card, and looked around a packed shop, full of manic sons and daughters, rushing to buy anything they could get their hands on.

I suddenly felt so angry, why had they left it until the day before, so ungrateful for what they had, and so irrational thinking from me! I quickly left the shop, hot, flustered, and dizzy.

I glanced across the road, suddenly it was all I could see in shop windows- Mum, mummy, nanny, granny, grandma, there were mums drinking coffee with grandchildren on their knees, walking together laughing, arguing, all of it magnified and closing in on me…..don’t do this to me now, I’m over grieving for you.

But what if you were here, would we make you a card? Would you scoop my babies up and cover them in kisses, sniff their sweet skin and thank me as an after thought? Would we have a Mothers Day breakfast and go for a walk around a lake, and argue about stupid things as we always did? You’d probably tell me I’d bought you flowers you didn’t like, and focus all your attention on squishing their rosy cheeks!

Wait….stop this, back in the moment, I need to carry on with my day and be grateful for what I have. This is something that has become a recurring problem for me, I get an irrational fear that if I’m not grateful for what I have I’ll lose something else, as one by one by family were taken from me, and I guess that as an adult child of an alcoholic I always think I caused it!

If grief creeps out from nowhere, I do my best to conceal it, and hope it will die down eventually, but most of the time it just manifests, and my body slows down until I give in and let it all out.

I was kind to myself this Mothers Day. On the way back from a lovely walk with my husband and babies I went to the cemetery, unplanned. My boy drew a picture of us all, and took Mum a stick as I forgot to buy flowers, he always lightens the mood! I let myself have quiet time later while everyone was out, put on Mums favourite music, and allowed myself to think of her, the lovely, kind, funny, sister-like mum she was when her body ran clean of alcohol. I looked at any pictures without the bleary drink affected eyes, and unbruised body, and remembered her as a mum, not an alcoholic, but knew deep down she could never have been the grandparent I wanted her to be, my poor mum.

I just need to say it, 15 Mothers days on, I still miss you mum, excruciatingly, whole-heartedly from a place deep inside me where our bond began, and where the bond with my babies also lies. Sometimes it’s just too much, and I need to accept that it’s ok to miss you still, I’m not failing, nothing bad will happen, its not that I’m ungrateful, I’m just a daughter without a mother, and that isn’t always ok, and sometimes I still feel angry alcohol took you from me, and you missed out on so much.