This Mother’s Day, BCEdAccess honours the mothers, grandmothers, aunties, and caregivers who kept showing up when the system kept asking for more.
You got your children there. You got them into the bath, into clean pyjamas, and into bed. You woke them on time, usually. You made breakfast, packed lunches, checked bags, found shoes, carried backpacks, calmed bodies, negotiated transitions, and delivered your children — trusting — into the school’s hands.
Then you did what you were told to do. You attended the meetings. You took notes. You made the appointments. You drove to therapy, waited in waiting rooms, drove home again, followed up, filled out forms, gathered documentation, and tried to stay hopeful. When the school called, you came. When they called again, you came again.
And too often, when your child was still not supported, you were told the problem was you. You were called overprotective, too emotional, a difficult parent, not trusting enough. Your love for your child was treated as interference. Your knowledge was treated as suspicion. Your advocacy was treated as a threat to authority. You were managed, not heard.
Meanwhile, you were the one trying to hold your child together. You watched your child crumble because the school could not make adjustments that seemed simple to you. You comforted them when they came home crying. You held them while they raged. You sat patiently on the floor outside their bedroom door while you screamed silently and wept. You learned how to soothe a nervous system harmed by places that were supposed to be safe.
Then you came back anyway. You came to the next meeting. You brought more documentation. You asked clearer questions. You received non-answers wrapped in jargon. You were told to trust the process, even as you watched the process fail your child.
It cost you. Maybe you reduced your hours. Maybe you passed on the promotion. Maybe you left work early — again — and felt your colleagues recalibrate how they saw you. Maybe you took leave. Maybe you resigned. Maybe you are still trying to hold work together around a system that will not hold your child.
We know our members have lost incomes, careers, dreams, and the sense of themselves before advocacy. This is what happens when public systems depend on unpaid family labour to absorb the consequences of under-support, exclusion, delay, and denial. Mothers and caregivers are too often made into the safety net beneath systems that should have held children in the first place.
So today, we want to say this clearly: we see you.
We see the labour. We see the grief. We see the vigilance. We see the love. We see the cost of returning, again and again, to rooms where you should not have had to prove your child’s humanity.
You kept going.
You are still going.
This Mother’s Day, we honour every mother, grandmother, auntie, and caregiver carrying what the school system would not.
And because you deserve more than recognition: if you could have any gift today, what would it be?
Tell us in the comments. There are no wrong answers.
Happy Mother’s Day to the strongest people we know.
— BCEdAccess Society
