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11 No Bullshit Mother’s Day Celebration Stories

Image taken from top of StoryO article, it depicts me and one of my children as a small child blowing through straws. It also depicts other mother and children combos, including one mother with her baby throwing up! The text is of various quotes form the article and the heading which is "No Bullshit Raw Genuine Mother's Day"

About this

StoryO is a New Zealand–based storytelling platform that shares honest, long‑form stories from women, non‑binary, and other under‑represented people across Aotearoa. Founded to challenge narrow ideas of success, it amplifies diverse lived experiences through interviews, video, events, and community conversations that centre vulnerability, representation, and social change. I was interviewed for a no bullshit Mother’s Day story!

Mother’s Day is upon us and we wanted to celebrate it in classic Storyo no-bullshit-all-vulnerability fashion!

Firstly, we’d like to acknowledge and send aroha to all those without mothers, those that can’t or don’t want to have kids, those that don’t have relationships with their mothers, and anyone and everyone in between. To every parent and child out there; you are valid, loved and seen 💖

To be frank, we’re tired of commercialisation of every holiday and ads about “being the perfect mom” or that “being a mom is the only fulfilling thing a woman can be”. That’s only one part of a larger story; only one role of the many. The mums we have interviewed are authors, artists, business owners, engineers, activists, advocates, sex workers, and leaders in their communities.

At Storyo we’re about raw & genuine stories of everyday failures and triumphs. To honour the wahine with children we have previously interviewed, we wanted to get their perspectives and feelings on parenthood. Here’s what they had to say…

I read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and proudly decided to take up the mantle. It fits perfectly with my Type A personality; the reason they call it a human race is because someone has to win. If I didn’t have enough time on this earth to win, then my kids would have to do it for me. So while my other parent friends are complaining about too much homework from school, I’m thinking of whether I can squeeze in piano lessons on the same day as extra math tutoring.

So no, I’m not a perfect mom, but I hope to raise awesome kids that will change the world (that is if I don’t get to it first).

What do we hope to instil in our kids? That’s a hard one. We’ve always talked about sex positivity, body neutrality, and consent. As parents of two cis-gendered boys, we were determined not to raise another lot of assholes. As mixed-race kids of two immigrant cultures, they innately understand the significance of race in their everyday lives, but do they know the different ways that other races are marginalised? As children of two reasonably successful middle-class people, will they understand the hardship and struggle for what they need? The oldest has just reached teen-dom, so I guess the proof is yet to come.

Pullquote in an image. It says "We've always talked about sex positivity, body neutrality, and consent. As parents of two cis-gendered boys, we were determined not to raise another lot of assholes.