How do you thank someone for everything? You don’t. Not in one day. Not ever fully.

This is why I want to argue that Mother’s Day — sweet as it may be — is painfully insufficient. It collapses an epic, lifelong labor of love into 24 hours of sentimentality and consumerism. It gestures toward something sacred but leaves it stranded in the shallow end of appreciation.

Some women love so deeply that they leave fingerprints on your soul. My mother is one of them.

She mothered me not as a duty but as a devotion. Her love was not performative, not occasional, not seasonal. It was — and still is — a constant, like gravity. Invisible, essential and always there to catch me if I fall.

She raised me with a tenderness that had teeth, the kind of love that didn’t just cradle but carved, that protected me not just by shielding me from the world entirely but by taking the first blows herself. When I was small and frightened, she made herself smaller too, curling around me like a cocoon. Her strength was quiet and astonishing, a kind of strength that didn’t announce itself but showed up every morning in the form of patience, softness and sacrifice. She held up the sky when it threatened to collapse, then taught me how to hold it, too.

There were no medals. No standing ovations. Just a daughter who made it through because her mother kept holding the line.

And yet — each year — the world asks me to reduce this story to a single day.

A pink-tinted holiday. A bouquet delivered by someone else’s hands. A brunch menu with a prix fixe. Maybe a card that says “thank you for everything” in curly font followed by my signature that I scribbled between classes.

And for many students, this isn’t just about sentiment. It’s about justice. It’s about recognizing that we are often standing on the shoulders of women who held more than we’ll ever know, women who raised us with invisible strength, often while quietly breaking under the weight without letting us bear witness to their pain. My mother gave me her whole self so that I could learn how to be mine. And I’m not the only student here who can say that.

So, why do we confine this love to one Sunday in May?

At universities like ours, we speak fluently about achievement. We publish research, award fellowships and etch names into plaques. But we rarely carve space to honor the origin stories — the ones that begin not in lecture halls or boardrooms, but in kitchens, hospital rooms, late-night phone calls and folded laundry. We don’t talk enough about how many of us were raised not just by mothers but because of mothers. They did not just bring us into the world  — they made us ready for it.

There are students here who carry their mother’s wisdom like a second spine. Who still hear her voice in moments of doubt. Who pack her love in their backpacks, between laptops and deadlines, as their most reliable form of survival.

And yet, we’re expected to express that ocean of gratitude with a single call, maybe flowers and maybe a five-minute slideshow on Instagram.

It’s not enough.

If Mother’s Day is the only time we pause to say thank you, we are failing to reflect the depth of what motherhood really is.

Here’s what I propose:

Let’s loosen the grip of tradition and imagine something richer. Let’s extend the spirit of Mother’s Day into a culture of daily, living appreciation. Let’s make room — in our institutions, in our conversations and in ourselves — for continuous honoring.

What if we let our mothers know what they mean to us on a random Tuesday, in a voice message sent after class, in the way we start to mother ourselves with the same tenderness they once gave us?

Mother’s Day can remain on the calendar, but it should never be the limit of our love. Some women deserve to be thanked every day.

My mother is one of them.

She made me who I am — not just by giving me life, but by reminding me every day that I was worthy of living well. She didn’t just raise me. She loved me into being.

And no day — no holiday, no card — could ever be enough for that.