SENATORS’ STATEMENTS — Mother's Day

Honourable senators, I rise today on the occasion of Mother’s Day, which will be celebrated on Sunday, May 10.

Before I became a mother, I was not particularly drawn to children. I was never the person who rushed across the room just because I saw a baby, so when I became a mother myself, I was completely unprepared for what I felt.

People speak about a mother’s love as though it is something easily understood. I thought I understood it too. I did not. There is something profoundly unsettling, in the best way possible, about realizing that your heart no longer moves through the world alone. A part of you now exists outside your body. You carry that awareness constantly.

Within my culture, being a mother is highly revered. In my mother tongue, Pashto, mor is a word for “mother.” But mor means more than being a mother. It is a term of endearment that shows deep respect, affection and emotional bonding. It is also a term used in poetry and songs to mean love and sacrifice.

As colleagues know, I am blessed to have two wonderful daughters, Anushka and Shaanzéh, who increasingly become more like friends as they grow up. We talk multiple times a day every day no matter which part of the world we are in.

I call my daughters Da Zra Sara. In Pashto, this translates to “the tip of my heart” or “the top of my heart,” an affectionate term used for someone very dear, indicating they occupy the highest place in the speaker’s heart.

This, colleagues, is what motherhood means to me. Not the picture-perfect version we often see represented in the media, but something quieter and more powerful. The way your entire sense of self shifts without permission. The way love settles so deeply into you that you cannot remember what life felt like before it existed.

Motherhood did not suddenly make me perfect or endlessly patient, but it changed the scale of my heart. It changed the way I understand devotion.

As Mother’s Day approaches, I think this is worth honouring: not just the visible work that mothers do, but the invisible transformation that comes with loving someone so completely.

To all mothers in this chamber and those watching from home, Happy Mother’s Day.

To my dear daughters, Da Zra Sara, thank you for making me understand a kind of love I never knew I was capable of feeling.

Thank you.