Mother’s Day can be incredibly challenging for working daughters. The responsibilities and emotional challenges you face on a daily basis, are often heightened on Hallmark holidays – especially if you are also a mother and you are hoping the day may bring you some much deserved respite and reward.

We’ve gathered a few tips over the years on how to navigate Mother’s Day. The key is to make the day your own – not try to live up to some mass marketed and manufactured standard. When our expectations for holidays are high, and frankly, unrealistic, that’s when we end up feeling dissatisfied and often hurt. But if we lean into our own vision of the day, our own goals, and if we can be honest about what truly matters to us, the holidays become much more manageable.

Here are our top tips for Mother’s Day when you are a working daughter:

Seek connection, not perfection. Prioritize relationships over activities. If you want to spend time with your mother, or your children, or on your own, focus on the feelings and the person. Flowers, brunch, cards, cookouts, and gifts are not what matter here.  Just be with the person you want to be with and let the rest happen – or not.

Honor your feelings. Be truthful with yourself about what you want out of the day. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or forgotten because of your caregiving responsibilities, don’t hesitate to communicate your needs to whoever is involved in planning the day – partner, parents, kids, siblings. If you need a break, admit it. If you don’t want to host, don’t sign up for it. Nothing bad will happen as a result of you prioritizing you – and actually, something good just may come of it.

Grieve if you need to grieve. Mother’s Day can be a challenge if you’re missing your mother due to death, distance or dementia, if you’ve had your own challenges being or becoming a mother, if you never had the mother you deserved, and for many other reasons. Give yourself time and space to honor your feelings. You’re not alone in dreading the day.

Split, or move, the day. When it comes to any holiday, remember it’s just a day on the calendar. You can celebrate any day of the year that you chose. Want to spend this Sunday honoring yourself? Do it! You can honor your mother another day. Is someone in the family in the hospital or unable to travel? Move the date!

Make Mother’s Day work for you by breaking the rules and writing your own. You deserve it Working Daughter!