When her beloved mother Phyllis T. Zeff died on Christmas Eve of 1994 after a 15-month battle with cervical cancer, Shae Uisna was “nearly destroyed. If I could have willed myself to stop existing,” Shae recalls, “I would have.” Now Shae offers comfort and community to other women who are similarly bereaved through her annual Motherless Mother's Day Celebration.

Mother's Day is a time to honor our Mothers, but with this comes the assumption that our Mothers are alive and well. What if your Mother has already passed away?

Shae welcomes all to attend, but has created the experience for those who have suffered loss, specifically of a Mother, Sister, Aunt, Grandmother, Cousin, Friend. She invites participants to bring a photo of their Mother, a story, and a potluck dish to share that she would have enjoyed. “We tell stories about our Mothers, talk about unfinished business, and where it is appropriate and wanted, tell each other things our Mothers would have told us, or things we would have liked to have heard from our Mothers,” says Shae.

Through remembering, we are no longer alone. Through sharing their stories, our Mothers live on among us.



The first Motherless Mother's Day Celebration was in 2010 on a cold, gray, Portland Mother’s Day morning. Fifteen participants gathered under a covered picnic area in a park, wrapped in blankets and extra jackets that Shae had brought. 

This nurturing instinct runs deep in Shae’s DNA. She recalls huddling with crying women and screaming children under the framework of a dressing room doorway in a California department store during a severe earthquake. “Something came over me and I said in a loud voice, ‘It's okay! We're going to be alright, we're all together!’ As soon at the world stopped shaking I said, ‘Come on everybody, let's get out of here!’ and I led them to the nearest exit. There's something in me that wants to comfort and help people who are frightened or grieving, because I know what it's like to feel scared and alone.”

Scared and alone – Shae frequently experienced these emotions in the years following her mother’s death. “Grief moves cyclically through our lives, it is not a linear process,” Shae notes. “Every year on Phyllis’ birthday, the anniversary of her death and Mother's Day, I would experience an upsurge of grief. I avoided going into stores right before Mother's Day because of the constant stream of commercial-babble (E.g. 'Show Mom how much you care this Mother's Day!') It was like plunging a knife into my heart.”

We’re stronger when we’re together.

After completing her training as a Life-Cycle Celebrant, Shae realized there were other people in the world who were also experiencing this sense of loss and grief on Mother's Day. “We can be so isolated in our society, this is why it’s important to form logical or intentional communities,” Shae says. “My Motherless Mother's Day Celebration sprang from my belief that we can get through a dark night of the soul together much better than we can if we're alone.” 

Gathering with other “motherless” mourners on Mother’s Day, Shae was surprised that the celebration produced equal part tears and laughter. “I knew there would be tears,” she says. “The laughter part was a surprise, and a gift. It’s like the group is breathing a collective sigh of relief: I am no longer alone. Someone else understands. Other people have lost their Mothers too. I can rise from the ashes of my sorrow and form new bonds, new friendships."

Participants express relief; a burden has been lifted. They ask, “Why has no one done this until now?” Shae replies, “It is what is needed for our Time. There is a Spirit of the Time, of each Age…the Zeitgeist. Those of us who are paying attention, who have our finger on the pulse of what is needed, are creating new patterns, new celebrations, new rituals and ceremonies. This is what we do as Celebrants.”

What is today tradition, Shae believes, began in one person’s imagination. “Someone, or someones, felt a need for something in their community and it so resonated with what others wanted and needed that the community embraced and adopted it as their own. And repeated it. And passed it down to their children and their children's children.” Shae’s Motherless Mother’s Day, now in its fourth year, is well on its way to becoming an important community tradition. How do you mark Mother’s Day or other days of remembrance for those no longer living? 

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With thanks to Shae Uisna for sharing her story and her work. Shae says, "As a Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant, I honor participants’ beliefs, life-experiences, religions and spiritual choices, without imposing my own beliefs. My over-arching goal is to be as inclusive with as many people as possible." You can email her or visit her Motherless Mother's Day Facebook page.

 I'm pleased to offer another great story by a colleague, this time from Barbara Parker, a Life-Cycle Celebrant living in the beautiful Canadian Rockies. The details of her week differ from mine - a wedding, a memorial, and a vow renewal - but the depth of experience, the gratitude for all that this work offers, is the same.

A Week in the Heart of a Life-Cycle Celebrant
by Barbara Parker

When I started my blog I was worried about my audience, and thought I needed to appeal to my “ideal client” and all of that. Since my business includes weddings and funerals, and any rite of passage in between, that covers a lot of ideal people. I’ve been a little self-conscious. You know, you post something about a Death Café, and the brides don’t like it too much. You talk too much about vows and tulle, and the baby boomers glaze over.

The truth is, life is messy, and full of love and loss, every inch of the way. There is no such thing as a major life event that doesn’t contain within it the whole shootin’ match, the entire spectrum of beginnings and endings:  dreams, potential and farewells. What I noticed this week, as I walked some length of a lifeline through ceremony, is how much we share, at whatever stage of life we’re at. I also noticed, (no big surprise) that my clients change me. So I write this blog the way I’ve always written in my life, not so much because I have something to say, but because I need to figure out what just happened.

First thing Monday morning, I married a young couple at the Banff Springs Hotel. This was a joyous occasion. They were teenage sweethearts, who had met at an ice-cream shop and began their relationship nine years ago to the day. They were well suited to each other, they had already tested their relationship, and they adored one another.  And still, the tears! Her father, in the hotel lobby, minutes before he walked his daughter down the aisle. Wiping his eyes, which were already tearing up, he admitted to me that he didn’t realize until that minute that he was losing his little girl, and handing her over to another man. Of course, the absurdity of his statement was also apparent, as she was well grown up and had been with this fellow for many years. Still. The ceremony cemented an understanding, and helped him face the passage of time and meaning.

Later, when we mentioned and brought to mind the parents and grandparents now passed, there wasn’t a dry eye in the crowd, which was comprised of the very closest friends and family.  Once again, the sensation of the wheel of time, and our precious part in it, was shared among all the family and friends, and the room was thick with emotion.

Mostly though, there were smiles and laughter, as in, when the bride raised her eyebrows “so high”, when her groom spoke of his pride at this particular skill of hers. The groom look as pleased as punch in his new grey suit. The bride’s confident and powerful recitation of her vows only cracked when she said “the father of our children”. Hope, love, and Orange Juice, all before noon.

The rest of the week, with the help of a community of friends, I walked a place of more sorrow than joy, as we planned and prepared a memorial service for one of the brightest human beings on the planet. This particular community turned a raw and snowy spring day into a riot of colour, with pots and pots of daffodils, tulips and irises. The cavernous school auditorium was transformed into a garden, and there was music and singing, and words to lift our very heavy hearts.  The function of this ceremony was to give us a container; a space for our grief for a time, so we could feel held and embraced by the love that guided our friend’s life.

I noticed as we collectively remembered her ever-present smile (in the face of great challenge), the atmosphere in the room was light, and I felt my own heart soar. To truly bear witness to an exceptional life was inspiring beyond circumstance. In the midst of grief, I noticed myself re-dedicating to life, surprised once again by the middle road we walk between winter and spring, hello and good-bye.

The week rounded out with a trip to the winter wonderland of Lake Louise, where I met the couple from Florida and their twin girls, who were there to renew their vows after ten years of marriage. The big loss this time was luggage that didn’t arrive, which meant the brand new suit and dress also didn’t arrive. But this couple took it in stride, shopped at Cross Iron Mills on the way from the airport, and carried on with their plan.

The ceremony was intimate: just me and the family, and the photographers (and my friend and her guide dog as witnesses).  We were in the empty ballroom at the Chateau, which of course, felt a bit like a castle in a fairy tale for girls who had never seen snow before. When I told the couple’s “love story” to them, I was reminded that days before I had addressed my friend’s grown children with the words, “We know ourselves through our stories.”

These six-year-old girls hung on my every word, and they were especially delighted when their “entrance” was announced within the story – the day they were born, when their parents knew their job was to stay together because they were a family. When the groom read his vows aloud, his daughter looked at him like he was Prince Charming – her mouth rounded in a small “o” of wonder and pleasure.

The girls added their own words to the story within the ceremony, sharing what they love about their family: “My mom and dad take care of me when I’m sick. They take us on trips.  My family gives me cuddles and kisses.” When they stood in a circle and smiled at each other, I sensed this moment would imprint on all of them, and become one of those treasured memories.  No tears this day, just some heartfelt words of thanks for love recognized. And poodle hugs.

It was a big week, and my heart is swelling with gratitude for the “clients” that I was privileged to work with. Because of course, they weren’t clients at all. They were teachers. That’s an ideal I can live with.

So when it came time to celebrate 25 years together they saw it as the perfect opportunity to marry their love of community with their passion for making the world a better place. They approached Habitat with an idea that had never been tried: instead of seeking a corporate sponsor for Womenbuild, they would ask their friends to act as sponsors through a fundraising drive in honor of their anniversary. 

"We started the fundraising at $2,500, thinking this was a high amount to fundraise," they say. "As the money started to be donated and was  approaching the $2,000 mark, we decided to raise the number to $5,000.  As it started to get into the $4,500 range with weeks to go, we raised it to the final amount of $7,500 and eventually collected over $9,300 for Suffolk Habitat!"