If you feel it’s your day, then celebrate! Whether you call yourself Mom, Mama, Mommy, Maman, Mamá, Mami, Momo, Momily, MaPa, Baba, Maddy, or any other parenting name, if you want to rejoice in your parental identity today (more so than any other day), go for it! Mother’s Day and Father’s Day can seem to underscore that LGBTQ families are different—but I say that’s all the more reason to reclaim the holidays as our own.
Many of us LGBTQ parents have very legitimate concerns about how schools will approach the events and whether they will, even unintentionally, make our children feel uncomfortable or ashamed about their families. Welcoming Schools has some resources for teachers (and for parents to share with teachers) that may help. (And here are some additional books about families, inclusive of ones with two moms or two dads.) I hope, however, that these holidays ultimately give us an excuse to start conversations with teachers and our children about our families, making the occasions into learning experiences rather than anxiety-producing ones.
At home, however, we get to design our own celebrations, whether that means celebrating one parent or more on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or any other day that is meaningful to us. We’re a diverse bunch who came into our parenthood in various ways, so our festivities should be similarly various.
Let’s remember, too, that LGBTQ families are not the only ones to grapple with how or if to celebrate these holidays. Over at ABC News, “6 non-traditional families share how they celebrate Mother’s Day“—and they’re just a sampling. And those of us who have lost our own parents, like myself, have even more complicated feelings about these holidays as they run both ways along the generations.
I’ve long felt, though, that the entire time between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day forms a sort of “family season” that should be used to revel in the wide diversity of families, even if we also use them to honor particular members of our own.
This “spirit of the season” is one of the reasons I have always held my annual Blogging for LGBTQ Families Day at the start of June. Not only is it the start of Pride Month, but it sits roughly midway between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day—honoring both, but reminding us that not all families fit neatly into those two days. This year, I’m kicking things up a notch to make the event into the broader social media campaign of #LGBTQFamiliesDay. Whether you use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, a blog, or any other form of social media, post and share with that hashtag on Monday, June 4. Let’s see how much buzz we can create. And if you want to submit a link to one of your posts, to be shared on the master list for the day, you may still do so—but mostly, get out onto social media and use the hashtag to celebrate and support LGBTQ families. Allies are welcome, too!
No matter how you celebrate, may this be a joyful time of year for you and your families!