Lotte Jeffs: ‘Mother’s Day can be a stark reminder of what’s missing in many women’s lives’

Mother’s Day is an emotionally complicated time for my family. I’m an only child and am very close to my Mum, more so since she divorced my Dad when I was in my early twenties. I’ve always made a big effort on Mother’s Day to do something nice with her – a lunch out, a trip to a gallery or a spa. But while a bottle of prosecco and some tulips might have once been a sufficient expression of my daughterly gratitude, now the day involves so many different kinds of motherhood, love and a multitude of associated feelings, I doubt there’s  a card in the world that reflects the complex reality of what the day signifies to me.

For a start, I’m a Mum myself now – but so’s my wife, which means there’s no sense of it being a special day for one of us over the other.  My friends Sarah and Mel have a good idea – they celebrate one Mum on British Mother’s Day and the other on the American date. But maybe what I should really be petitioning for is a queer calendar that factors in special days for Mummy and Mama, Dad and Daddy to be nationally ‘honoured’. Judging by my inbox of press releases, every day is an ‘official’ celebration of something, from pies to the colour purple, so an ‘Other Mother’ day shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.