But, now that I think about it, I might have an aversion to Mother’s Day altogether. So in the time tested tradition of mindfulness, I deliberately turned around, took a couple of deep breaths, and soaked in the display of cards. I took note of the range of feelings, sense impressions and physical sensations that showed up in that moment. I wasn’t surprised when a wave of sadness came over me, reminiscent of the sadness when my mom passed away.

It washed over me quickly, and before I knew it I was looking through the cards one after another and found them fascinating. The well meaning but not convincing illustrations of pets and sunsets together with the sugar sweet rhymes just didn’t resonate with me. I wondered what a Mother’s Day card would look like that truly reflected all the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sufferings that make up the real world of a mom.

I don’t know about other people’s experience of motherhood, but mine has been far from bland. To do a good job at it I had to learn to tolerate sights, sounds, smells and feelings that were extremely unpleasant and sometimes painful. Changing my first stinking diaper, cleaning up spit-up, and holding my son in the emergency room while the doctor sewed his cheek back together, were all experiences that pushed against my comfort zone. Big time. I didn’t like it much at the time but later I came to learn that pain and discomfort is as meaningful a part of mothering as joy. Miserable as some of my mommy experiences were at the time, I would not trade them for anything.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t glorify the unpleasant nor am I am masochist. I just find the edginess of motherhood interesting. And when I read greeting cards, and parenting books, and magazine articles, and wellness blogs extolling the sweetness of motherhood without mentioning the sour, well . . . . I get bored. For me, clearly seeing and fully experiencing the sour stuff in life, while usually difficult, tends to lead to a somewhat idyllic psychological place. As one of my teachers often tells me, the only way out of the muck is through, and the way through is known as clear seeing.

Clear seeing may well be the greatest gift mindfulness has to offer. It encompasses not just what we pick up through our five senses (seeing, hearing, tasting, touching and smelling) but also what we know through intuition. Clearly seeing what is happening in, to and around you as it is happening, without bias or reactivity, is a process that leads to one of the most extraordinary experiences of mindfulness practice, one that my mother called finding some peace of mind.

Although my mom never heard of mindfulness before I became interested in it, finding a little peace of mind was something she cared a lot about. To her peace of mind was freedom from worry. If my brother stayed down in the basement for longer than she expected, my mom ran down and checked to see if he was all right just to give herself some peace of mind. If my sister was late coming back from a date my mom would wait for her to get home before going to bed to have some peace of mind. Even though she had no reason to think her cookies were burning, she would ask one of us to run and check just to give her a little peace of mind. Peace of mind was something my mom was able to attain after she was satisfied that there was nothing left to worry about. (At least nothing she knew of at the time.) Once the worry was gone she could relax, but until she was assured that everything was ok, nothing could take her mind off of whatever it was that was bothering her. My mom’s old-fashioned way of coping with her worries is similar to how mindfulness practice helps children manage difficult emotions and rest in their own peace of mind.

Peace of mind is not the same as zoning out or going into a trance. A parent recently asked me if I could teach her over-achieving daughter to zone out; which she thought would be a very good thing. While it made sense that she wanted to help daughter learn to calm and quiet her mind (and mindfulness class taught her some self-directed calming skills), I explained that we don’t teach children to zone-out in mindfulness class. ‘Zoning out’ or going into a trance is mindlessness, the very opposite of being mindful. Instead of teaching children to zone out, mindfulness teaches them to see clearly.

The first step towards seeing clearly is learning to integrate all of the information that comes into our minds and bodies objectively, without bias or reactivity. Spend a little bit of time looking inward and it quickly becomes clear that a lot of things are happening at once. Thoughts, emotions and sense impressions flash through your mind in the blink of an eye. Ever stub your toe on something that was left in a place where it didn’t belong? The sense impression pain (ouch!) springs up immediately followed by a thought (who left it there?) and maybe an emotion (what a jerk!). In mindfulness class we teach kids tools to help notice and identify all that is happening, as it is happening, but to hold off conceptualizing (or putting words to) it just for a moment. This process has been described by Western mindfulness teacher Jack Kornfeld as “a surrender to what is actually happening in each moment without trying to alter or change or put a conceptual framework around it. . . This cultivates a state of mind which allows us to be open, to observe and experience fully the entire range of mental and physical reality without either suppressing it or acting it out”. An enormous benefit of paying attention in this way is that children and parents alike develop the capacity to tolerate some pretty rotten things – some serious discomfort – and in so doing sometimes they may find a little peace of mind.

A friend of mine’s mom recently passed away. She chose to sit with the body for many hours just for the sake of being there. She watched as the march of death swept in on her mom quickly and physical changes began to set in. In a culture that has a hard time looking at death and dying, my friend’s choice might seem strange or a little morbid to some. But not to my friend, who was steeped in the tradition of mindfulness and chose to clearly see and experience the process cycle of death not just in her mom’s body, but in her own thoughts, feelings, emotions and sensory impressions. She told me later that the experience was not dreary at all; she even took pictures to help her remember it later. Her experience, while in some respects difficult, was ultimately joyful and led to a profound experience of peace.