Mothers' Day: The Rant

Pardon me if I'm a tad confused about Mothers' Day as of late.  What used to be a day of phoning your mother and buying her flowers has turned into a crazed circus of acknowledging every single female in your life.

I'm am NOT anti-woman by any means.  However, it gets dangerously muddled when:  sisters, babysitters, nurses, teachers, friends, female patrons at a restaurant, and female relatives with no children get thrown into the "mother" group.

Who gets acknowledged?  Who doesn't?  What if somebody gets insulted if they're not acknowledged and you acknowledged another 'non-mother' as a mother?  What if somebody gets offended if you do acknowledge them as 'non-mother'  mother?  What if a very gender neutral looking man gets handed a rose when he enters an establishment on Mothers' Day?

Let's take this a bit further....  What if a woman who is having fertility issues gets acknowledged, or a woman who just had a miscarriage or stillbirth?   What about the woman who may have lost her child in a car accident or to some hideous disease?  What about the mother who made the heart-wrenching decision to put her baby up for adoption and is longing for contact and wonders constantly about the child she will never know?  What about the woman who opted NOT to have children?  What about the woman who recently lost her *own* mother and this is a painful day? 

See where it gets blurred and emotions could come boiling to the surface when the chirpy-good-intentioned-mothers'-day-mass-acknowledger casually assumes the holiday is pleasant for everyone?   There are often painful, private details about a woman's life that Mothers' Day brings to the surface.  Unless the woman is your mother and/or you know the personal, intimate details of her life, STFU and don't assume ANYTHING. 

Who even started this crap of making Mothers' Day tentacles to reach to every female (or female looking person) on the globe whether or not they had children?  I'm sure it was the Bored Moms on Prozac Committee.  The irony. 

Either rename the holiday to Global Female Day and acknowledge every woman unanimously across the board, or keep the original intent of honoring YOUR MOTHER.   Anything else will get you into trouble -- even if your intentions are good.