Not Everyone is Celebrating Mother’s Day

On November 1, 2006 my daughter Sophie and I became statistics. Not quite three, she joined the ‘Motherless Children’s Club’. And I became part of the 8% of U.S. households where a single father is raising a child.

That was the day my wife, actor and filmmaker Adrienne Shelly (WAITRESS), was brutally murdered while working in her West Village office.

For the past fifteen years I’ve struggled to get Sophie and I through yet another painful Mother’s Day. It’s not a celebration in my home. It’s more like an intense 24-hour stomach virus.

The day is especially difficult for Soph, who went to bed one cold Autumn night a happy, innocent toddler and woke the next morning to a dark, unrecognizable world.

Sophie is 18 now. She’s had to navigate through her early childhood, her angst-ridden teens, a terrifying pandemic and the college-selection process without the love, guidance and nurturing of her mother.

So tomorrow is a day neither of us are looking forward to.

It’s also a day many people are dreading.

Because not everyone has a mother.

Some have a mother they don’t like. Or even love.

Some have mothers who are neglectful. Or worse, physically and/or verbally abusive.