Today is Mother’s Day. A day to celebrate all the moms in our lives. It’s also a day that magnifies loss for many people.

For me, as a foster parent, it has become a day of very mixed emotions. 2 years ago I celebrated my first mother’s day as a mom. Little J had been with me for about 5 months, my mom was in town to celebrate with us and it felt really good. A few days earlier I had passed along the Mother’s Day card he made at school to his birth mom (his first mom) and it felt really sad that she would not get to be with him on this day. Holding both of these truths, my memories of that holiday were still mostly wrapped in love and the happiness of getting to celebrate my first year of motherhood being J’s temporary mom.

The following Mother’s Day was one of the most painful days that I can remember. J was back with his first family and while we keep in touch and I get to see him every once in while, not having him with me every day was still really hard at that time. Most days I can find a balance of sadness for me and happiness for them. On that day, almost 5 months after he left, a day when the world was celebrating motherhood, all I could feel was his absence.

I knew going into this journey that saying goodbye to children would be hard, no matter how long they are with me. There are many things that I came into this knowing, “yes, that will be hard.” What I’ve come to find over and over is that knowing something is going to be hard can’t fully prepare you for actually going through the hard parts. My grief was and is deeper than I ever imagined. Today, on this Mother’s Day, I am once again head over heels in love with the child in my home. I will take time today to sit in the joy that it brings me to be his mama right now. I’m also missing my kids who have come and gone, and it’s important to recognize and honor that pain.

The pain I feel is an important reminder to me about the unimaginable pain that must come with having your own child removed from your home. Today I’m sad that the first mom of my little guy doesn’t get to be with him. I want foster care to be beautiful. And in many ways it is. It’s also tragic. That we have failed to support communities for so long that some families cannot support their own children is tragic. That kids aren’t with their mothers today and every day, in so many cases, is tragic.

I’m beyond honored that I get to be a mother in this way and also wish that we lived in a world where foster parents weren’t needed. I hope that what I do gives families the opportunity to heal and I hope that we continue to find better ways to keep families together. Until then, I’ll sit in both the joy and the sorrow of being called mama by my little one. Today I will celebrate my own mom who I see in myself as I parent. I am beyond grateful for so many things she instilled in me from a very young age. Today I will recognize the pain of so many others who are without their own children or their own mother for whatever reason that may be. I see you and I am with you. And especially on this day I hold heavy the responsibility of sharing this title with the first moms of the children I love as if they were my own.