Mothering in place

A reflection on mothers, mothering, and the food that holds us.

Mother’s Day can be beautiful. It can also be complicated.

This morning, I was in my local supermarket, and almost every grocery cart seemed to have a bouquet of flowers in it. All around me were buckets of blooms sitting in water, ready to be chosen.

It’s Mother’s Day, I thought, with a mix of emotions.

It’s sweet how people buy flowers, take their mothers for brunch, and call their mothers.

However, for many people, this day is not simple.

It can bring grief, disappointment, or the ache of what was missing. The ache of a mother who has passed away, and the ache of the mother we needed growing up, but could not be there for us.

I think about my own mother, who passed away more than 30 years ago.

Like many Japanese Canadian families, there were silences. I knew only fragments of what she endured. She carried unhealed trauma, and I was shaped by it.

She lost her parents at a young age, was separated from her siblings, and was sent from Vancouver to Japan to live with relatives who did not want her and abused her.

Mother’s Day reminds me that mothering is not only a role. It is an energy of care, protection, tenderness, nourishment, and love.

And sometimes, we are the ones learning to mother ourselves.

To mother ourselves is to give ourselves what we once wished someone else had given us. It is about stopping our trying to earn love from people and places that cannot offer it. And it is to show up for us with kindness, consistency, and care. Like our best friend would.

In doing so, I am slowly learning to mother myself in a way my mother was never taught and therefore could not teach me.

We may inherit histories and ways of being we did not choose. But we can decide how we grow from them.

For many Japanese Canadian families, food has always been about more than food. It has been survival, memory, connection, and love.

Sometimes food was how love spoke when words could not.

My mother spent every day cooking a complicated Japanese meal for us. While I took it for granted at the time, I see now it was her way of saying things she could not say aloud: I made this for you, and I hope you enjoy it. Because I care about you and love you.

This Mother’s Day, I honour the mothers and chosen family who have loved us.

I also hold space for those for whom this day is complicated and painful.

Wherever you are today, may love find you in a form you can receive. And may you let it in to nourish and love you.

Because in each generous act toward us, a new way of being takes root. And from these roots, new growth is possible.

Perhaps part of mothering ourselves is learning what we need to be nourished. Because in each generous act toward ourselves we receive, we let the light and love in, so we can grow.

One of the foods my mother and I loved to eat was takenoko gohan (bamboo shoot rice).

When I make it and eat it, it reminds me of her and us.

In this way, food can bind and hold us.

It can carry memory, tenderness, and what words could not. And it can transform even a complicated relationship with my mother, from suffering into healing and love, thirty years after her passing.

Japanese Mushroom Rice

Inspired by takenoko gohan (bamboo shoot rice), which signals spring in Japan, this version uses mushrooms for their delicate earthiness. A mix of shiitake, shimeji, and enoki works well, but use what you can find.

Ingredients

Serves 2–3

1 cup Japanese short-grain rice1¼ cups water1 cup mixed mushrooms, cleaned and trimmed2 tbsp soy sauce2 tbsp mirin1 tbsp sake1 tbsp sugar1 tbsp sesame oil¼ tsp salt1 small piece dried kombu

Optional garnish: crushed roasted sesame seeds, grated ginger, microgreens

Directions

1. Rinse rice until the water runs mostly clear. Let it rest for 10 to 15 minutes.

2. Clean and trim the mushrooms, saving tough stems for a future stock if you like.

3. In a pot, combine rice, water, soy sauce, mirin, sake, sugar, sesame oil, salt, and kombu.

4. Scatter mushrooms evenly on top. Do not stir.

5. Cover and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, until the rice is tender and the liquid is absorbed.

6. Remove from heat and let sit, covered, for 5 to 10 minutes. Remove kombu.

7. Serve with garnishes and pickles of your choice.