Happy Mother’s Day, bitches

Posting this a little early because you mommas deserve something that comes easy, lands on time, and does not require three follow-up emails.

For everyone already bracing for Mother’s Day: this one is for the mothers who are done being good.

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Oh great, Mother’s Day again. The annual public performance of gratitude for mothers, offered for one day by a society that spends the other 364 treating maternal labour as infinitely renewable and maternal anger as a personality disorder.

And I’m supposed to pretend that my PDA son, who has been harmed by public school so badly he’s been unable to leave his room for almost a year, is going to participate in this ritual. I’m supposed to muster the energy to celebrate my two mothers, even if the school has stolen all my capacity. I’m supposed to post highlights of my day to social media. Even if I’m fucking burnt out, I’m supposed to be a good mother and do the Mother’s Day thing.

This post is for the mothers who are fucking pissed off.

The good mother

The good mother is patient. The good mother is collaborative. The good mother understands that everyone is doing their best. The good mother waits for the meeting, follows the process, softens her emails, thanks people for their time, and says things like “I appreciate how complex this is” while her child is coming home shattered, dysregulated, excluded, or unable to attend.

The good mother does not say: my child is being harmed and you are protecting the institution. She says: I am wondering whether we could revisit the current support plan.

The good mother is a trap.

She is useful to the system

The good mother is the version of you the system can tolerate. She is the mother who keeps showing up with documentation, but carefully edited; concern, but not too much anger; grief, but not too much accusation; clarity, but not too much force. She is allowed to participate so long as participation means absorbing delay, managing disappointment, and continuing to believe that the next meeting might be the one where someone finally does the obvious thing.

The good mother is praised because she is useful. She picks up the child early. She reduces her hours. She absorbs the meltdown. She translates institutional failure into home-based repair. She keeps the school day possible by carrying the part of the school day the school refuses to carry. Then, when she asks why this keeps happening, she is told to be patient, positive, trusting, collaborative.

She edits herself into nothing

The good mother tries to sound reasonable. She tries to stay calm. She tries to make the case in the language the system respects. She removes the sentence that sounds too angry. She deletes the sentence that sounds too sad. She removes the word discrimination because she knows everyone will tense. She removes the word harm because she knows someone will ask whether she is catastrophising.

Eventually, she removes herself from her own account until all that remains is a polite email begging for baseline access.

And still, her child is not supported.

Process is not protection

That is when the trap begins to show itself. The good mother was never promised support. She was promised process. She was promised relationship. She was promised that if she behaved correctly, she would remain welcome in the room.

But being welcome in the room is not the same as her child being safe in the classroom.

The good mother is told not to escalate. Not to make assumptions. Not to damage the relationship. Not to speak from emotion. Not to send too many emails. Not to bring too many examples. Not to name the pattern too clearly. Not to become “adversarial,” which usually means: not to notice that the system has already become adversarial toward her child.

The good mother is asked to confuse compliance with care.

Disabled children do not need palatable mothers

Disabled children do not need mothers who are endlessly palatable to institutions that are failing them. They need mothers who are willing to become inconvenient. Mothers who stop translating harm into “concerns.” Mothers who understand that calm is not a prerequisite for truth. Mothers who know that being liked by the school is not the goal.

So no. Do not be the good mother they can safely ignore.

Be a raging bitch.

Not cruel. Not reckless. Not abusive. But done. Done shrinking. Done performing gratitude for crumbs. Done making institutional comfort the measure of whether your advocacy is acceptable. Done letting your child’s access depend on whether you can make the adults feel unthreatened while they fail to act.

What a raging bitch says

• Be the mother who says: no, this is not working.
• Be the mother who says: what is the timeline?
• Be the mother who says: what happens if this is not done?
• Be the mother who says: who is responsible?
• Be the mother who says: where is this documented?
• Be the mother who says: put your proposal in writing.
• Be the mother who says: my child’s right to access is not dependent on my tone.

Let them call you difficult

The system will call this difficult because difficult is what it calls a mother who stops participating in her own containment. It will call you emotional because emotion is easier to discredit than evidence. It will call you aggressive because clarity from mothers is treated as a threat. It will call you unreasonable because reasonableness has been defined as your willingness to wait while your child deteriorates.

Let them.

The good mother will not save your disabled child. She was designed to save everyone else from the discomfort of what your child needs.

Your anger is information

Your anger is not the problem. Your anger is information. It is the part of you that still understands that this is wrong. It is the part of you that has not been fully trained into compliance. It is the part of you that knows love is sacred and all this bullshit is fucking made up.

Happy Mother’s Day to the mothers who are done

So happy Mother’s Day to the mothers who are done being good. Be a fucking bitch. I love that for you.

Happy Mother’s Day to the mothers who have been called too much because they noticed too clearly.

Happy Mother’s Day to the mothers who were told to trust the process and learned, instead, to trust themselves.

You are the mother your child needs.