This Must Be The Place

So anyway, it’s Mother’s Day Eve.

And every year this holiday arrives dressed like a candle from Anthropologie.

Soft music.
Fresh peonies.
A woman in a linen dress laughing over waffles while generations of emotionally healthy women pass syrup around a sunlit kitchen.

Beautiful.
Truly.

Cannot relate.

I didn’t grow up inside that kind of softness.

Motherhood, in my world, wasn’t wrapped in ribbon and brunch reservations. It felt heavier than that. More survival. More tension. More trying to become a safe place while still learning what safety even was.

And somehow, despite all of it, I became a mother anyway.

Which honestly feels a little rebellious.

Tonight I sat at a graduation dinner eating cake when the thought landed in my brain like a tiny prophetic mic drop:

We eat cake to celebrate.

That’s the entire thing.

Humans survive something hard and immediately decide:
“Bring out sugar.”

Birthdays.
Weddings.
Graduations.
Baby showers.
Retirements.
Sobriety anniversaries.
Escaping terrible relationships.
Making it through a random Tuesday without losing your mind in the Costco parking lot.

Cake means:
We made it.

And suddenly I thought about the phrase “Let them eat cake.”

The quote famously pinned to Marie Antoinette. The ultimate symbol of disconnection and privilege. A woman so detached from suffering she supposedly responded to starving people by suggesting dessert.

Except historians don’t even think she said it.

Which honestly tracks.
Human beings love assigning villain monologues to women.

But somewhere along the way, I think we misunderstood cake entirely.

Cake isn’t about ignorance.
Cake is about defiance.

It’s the audacity to celebrate while the world is still imperfect.

And maybe that’s why this Mother’s Day feels different to me.

Because I’m finally realizing I do not have to fully heal before I’m allowed to enjoy my life.

I don’t have to solve every ache from my childhood before sitting at the table.
I don’t have to understand every missing piece before accepting love from my children without flinching.
I don’t have to become the woman in the linen commercial before I’m worthy of celebration.

I can simply decide:
This must be the place.

Not because it’s perfect.
Not because it matched the blueprint.
Not because I got the soft beginning.

But because I stayed.
Because I built warmth anyway.
Because somewhere along the line, despite everything, I became the kind of woman who sets the table instead of flipping it over.

And that feels important.

People like me spend years believing healing will arrive like a lightning strike.
One grand revelation.
One holy moment where suddenly the grief untangles itself and all the missing pieces click into place.

But healing is usually much less cinematic than that.

It’s buying flowers at Trader Joe’s because no one ever bought them for your mother.
It’s learning not to apologize when someone loves you well.
It’s letting your kids celebrate you even when part of you still wants to hide.
It’s sitting at a noisy dinner table eating cake and realizing your life may not have started soft…

…but softness found you anyway.

So yes.

Let them eat cake.

Not because they are blind to suffering.

Because they survived it.

This Must Be The Place

Creative inspiration:
“This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” by Talking Heads

As always, music shared for inspiration and commentary purposes only. I do not own rights to the song.