Grief has come in waves for Katrina Zborowsky.
“It feels like so long ago since I’ve seen her,” Zborowsky said.
The Winnipegger lost her mom in a cycling accident in 2020, and never got to say goodbye.
“My mom’s name is Doris. We were best friends. We just loved doing everything together, loved shopping and she was super active,” Zborowsky said. “Everything that I love about myself, I saw in her, too.”
But after the accident, Zborowsky spent years dreading Mother’s Day.
“I’m going to be bombarded by mother content of some kind. I’m going to see it all over the place. For me, it was a day I just kind of wanted to curl in, stay at home, not see anyone, not do anything,” Zborowsky said.
A few years ago, that all changed.
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Zborowsky heard about an event in Toronto that brought together people who had lost their moms.
“It was an event that actually spoke to me on a day that I didn’t really ever thought I’d even be spoken to before,” Zborowsky said.
Called ‘Motherless Day,’ it’s described as the pity party you actually want to go to. It incudes crafts, flowers, drinks and more and is run by the non-profit, The Parentless Club.
“I still wanted to continue to commemorate my mom and even celebrate my mom on Mother’s Day but I didn’t have a space to do it. So rather than sitting around and wait for something to happen, I created this event,” Amanda Katz, co-founder of The Parentless Club, said.
Katz adds Motherless Day is all about doing meaningful activities that honour moms.
“It’s really about connecting with people that don’t exactly understand what the loss of your mom feels like, but they know what the loss of a mom feels like, and that connection is really powerful,” Katz said.
Zborowsky was so touched by the event in Toronto, she wanted to bring it to Winnipeg.
“Now that I have moved on to a very different part of my grief, I feel like now I can show up for others that maybe are experiencing those trenches of grief,” Zborowsky said.
The first Motherless Day event in Winnipeg is on Sunday, May 10, and is already sold out.
“It just means that next year we’ll have a bigger event and a larger community and provide that support for more people,” Zborowsky said.
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