If not your own mom, your next favorite mom mom (me)So, I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m the oldest of four siblings (that’s my own mom’s custom birthstone necklace up there!). You might have some assumptions about what that means that I’m the oldest daughter of such a large and unruly brood. Your assumptions would be wrong. Despite VERY MUCH suffering from debilitating oldest-daughter syndrome (I get the honor of being the very first child/grandchild/niece on two very differently generationally traumatized ancestral lines!!!! This is very fun and not stressful at all!!!!), I am absolutely not the password child. Or the favorite. Or even the comic relief/mascot. My generational trauma archetype lies somewhere between scapegoat and glass child. I’m not angry or bitter about this, I’m just very self aware that I was born into an unfortunate combination of “raised by literal children, one of which was an addict, in a cult” and “even the adults back in those days didn’t know little girls could have autism I really don’t think having adult parents would have even helped also OF COURSE traumatized people end up in cults.” Honestly if my therapist isn’t writing a book to capitalize on the unhinged-ness of my sessions I’m going to be very disappointed in her. Now, the purpose of that lil trauma dump was to give you some background on why you need to listen to me about what I’m going to say: while I have never been successful at becoming mom’s favorite, because rather than being a reliable and impressive oldest daughter (because I am the sibling that always has a stupid emergency, my next youngest sister is the sibling that fixes emergencies), I DO know a lot about what moms like and don’t like!!! My spicy brain has been watching my moms reactions as I miss the mark with gifts my entire life and then ANALYZING THE FUCK OUT OF THAT DATA AND FINDING ALL KINDS OF PATTERNS. Also, I like to think I’ve picked up some valuable insight on what moms like through my tenure as being a mom myself. For example: moms love gifts that are personalized and remind them of their kids (but not all moms like things with monograms or pictures so this one can be tricky), moms like things that are useful and not going to create clutter but ALSO are not reminding them of their role in domestic labor (unless a household appliance is SPECIFICALLY ASKED FOR avoid this at all costs), moms like things that are for THEM not the benefit of the whole family at their expense (I’m looking at you, brunch with small children), and most importantly, moms want EFFORT and PLANNING, not last minute afterthought (trust me we can tell). This can put a lot of us, especially the older we get and the more Mother’s days we’ve already gotten gifts for and thus want to avoid repeating, in a tough situation trying to find just the right thing. Lucky for you, you made a very good decision in signing up for my email list (I am very proud of you), because my custom birthstone necklaces are exactly the thing that meets every one of those qualifications. It’s personalized, but in a subtle way. It’s pretty and functional, but not a tool for domestic labor. It’s literally just something nice for her and her alone. It’s from a small business and you had to order it early, showing how much you prioritized your Mother’s Day shopping. Damn this oldest daughter syndrome spicy brain is good for something after all. Now, if you are deciding to go this route for your mom (or your partner, or yourself) and you want this to make it in time for Mother’s Day gifting: you DO need to get your order in by the end of the day tomorrow so that I can drop your orders off at the post office that’s open on Saturdays before I head off to our cruise. That, thankfully, with some very uncharacteristic thinking on my feet and asking for help even though I’m a Libra with oldest daughter syndrome and that made me want to throw up, I can now go on at peace knowing that I very narrowly averted financial calamity in regards to my early May bills, so, thank you for your support in that. The other piece of advice I’d give you before you order (because I have absolutely convinced you to order at this point, haven’t I?), is to PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY GO CHECK THE JEWELRY THAT YOUR INTENDED RECIPIENT ALREADY HAS AND GET THE SAME METAL. I have solid sterling and 14k gold filled options for this exact reason (no, she does not want “something different so she can have options”) This is, quite literally, your make or break moment.
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