The Truth About Motherhood
I have been a mother to my biological child for 21 years. I have helped raise 3 and now 4 other children as my own. I personally have a commitment to celebrating life every day, so I'm not big on acknowledging commercial holidays. I try to respect everyone and everything every day.
Having said that, I would like to share with you the most amazing words I have heard about Mother's Day, writings that strike the soul that I hope will get you thinking about what this day is really all about and the calling every one of us women on the planet have at this time, be we mothers in the traditional sense or not…
There is no shortage of children on this planet who need love and care. Having cared for 1000's of children around the world, I can say it with authority: You don't need to give birth to anyone to be a parent. You just need to care.
There is no serious discussion of rising female consciousness without allowing for one of the most basic feminine principles: the fierce mother in every woman.
Not every woman feels moved to have a child, to be sure, but every woman has within her a natural proclivity to protect children. It’s a universal concern that’s been fostered by millions of years of evolution, ensuring the survival of our species.
In fact, in every advanced mammalian species that survives and thrives, a common anthropological characteristic is the fierce behavior of the adult female when she senses a threat to her cubs. Think mama bear, mother lion, or mother tiger if she sees you near her cubs. Among the hyenas, in fact – a female-dominant species – the adult females encircles the cubs while they’re eating and will not let the adult males get anywhere near the food until the babies have been fed.
So why, if as individuals we are so caring, are we so relatively complacent as a group? 17,000 children starve on this planet every single day, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa; one in five American children live in poverty and are “food insecure” (many obese children are actually malnourished). Yet while the suffering of one child would be unbearable for us to look at, the suffering of millions is sometimes easier to ignore. It’s an odd psychological phenomenon, probably created by the fact that it’s relatively new in human history that people would even know about such numbers. Few people two hundred years ago had heard about the suffering of thousands of people at time, because they had no Internet or television to tell them about it.
One of our most important next steps in our evolutionary journey, then, is a collective sensibility among women that every child on the earth is one of our children, just as the earth itself is home to all of us. This awakening will change everything – from our economic systems to our political systems – because the care and protection of our children will finally get the primacy it deserves as a value that should be placed above all other considerations. Surely as women we can do better than the hyenas. I hope, and I think, we will.
***
The first person to fight for an official Mother's Day celebration in the United States was Julia Ward Howe. You may be more familiar with her name as the writer who wrote the words to the Civil War song, The Battle Hymn of the Republic:
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on.Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.”
Howe was born in New York City on May 27, 1819. Her family was well respected and wealthy. She was a published poet and abolitionist. She and her husband, Samuel Gridley Howe, co-published the anti-slavery newspaper The Commonwealth. She was active in the peace movement and the women's suffrage movement. In 1870 she penned the Mother's Day Proclamation. In 1872 the Mothers' Peace Day Observance on the second Sunday in June was held and the meetings continued for several years. Her idea was widely accepted, but she was never able to get the day recognized as an official holiday. The Mothers' Peace Day was the beginning of the Mothers' Day holiday in the United States now celebrated in May.
The modern commercialized celebration of gifts, flowers and candy bears little resemblance to Howe's original idea. Here is the Proclamation that explains, in her own powerful words, the goals of the original Mother's Day in the United States…
Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:”We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
“From the bosum of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
“Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, But of God
-In the name of womanhood and humanity,
I earnestly ask That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if on some Mother's Day, this dream could be fulfilled and the human race could celebrate a day when, all over the world, no mother would have to mourn the death of her child lost in war.
To all of the mothers whose children are fighting in wars – and to mothers whose children are growing up with wars raging around them… Wishes of strength, peace and hope for this Mother's Day…
And to all of us consumed with the nothingness of our puny lives today, thinking of ourselves only, what we can get, the bitching, the jealousy, the selfish living, instead of offering what we can give, may we rise up today and every day to be mothers and role models this world needs – the guardians of this earth – our home, and mothers to the inhabitants of it – our children.
Most of the incredible writings above are sourced and adapted from here and here.