My name is Khanyisa Ngobeni, author of the book, Walking Through The Pain of Stillbirth.

I am also a wife and a mother to a beautiful son, Ntivo born this year.

After getting married in 2011, I struggled to have children and in 2015 we lost our precious daughter Ntalo.

It was never an easy journey, for in our culture marriage means having children.

In the past ten years I have observed that women who don’t have kids are looked down on, disrespected and even called names, worst of all it even happens in the marriage.

How Mother’s Day is celebrated has really isolated women without children, they are treated as though they are not complete.

Also read: The history of Mother’s Day

I feel that the day is for everyone, women with or without children.

There are many women who had strained relationships with their own mothers and many women whose mothers have passed away, but he hardest hit among this group are women without children.

We need to consider every woman with or without a child on Mother’s Day.

To me a mother is someone with a caring heart, a ‘teacher caring for her student’, an aunt caring for her nieces and her nephews.

A mother is not defined by the number of children she holds in her arms but the love she carries in her heart.

We are all mothers with or without children, let us celebrate each other this Mother’s Day.