Mother’s Day – a time for celebrating the love of a mother. For some moms this day feels wonderful. We get cards, maybe a brunch, perhaps a gift, some flowers, a special dinner with our children, phone calls if there’s a distance that separates us.
However, for others, Mother’s Day is a painful reminder of either what once was, or what never was. I’m referring to those of us who have experienced the death of a child. Or those who have struggled unsuccessfully to have children but couldn’t? What if our mothers have passed? What about those who had abusive or neglectful mothers?
That’s a lot of exceptions, people not fitting into the party, feeling left out and maybe even a little angry. I’ve thought about these exceptions. I’ve asked myself what kind of shift could make Mother’s Day something everyone could celebrate?
Let’s start with a story about how Mother’s Day came to be in the first place.
Journey with me back to the year 1850, to a little Appalachian town called Webster, in the state of Virginia. Ann Reeves Jarvis, age 18, was just beginning her life as a wife and anticipating becoming a mother. Her father was a minister and her husband a merchant.
By age 35, Ann had given birth to at least 11 children, some accounts say 13, and only four lived to become adults. Measles, typhoid fever, diphtheria and other now preventable diseases killed seven, maybe even nine, of her children.
Here is a woman who buried twice as many babies as she raised. Ann could have easily given in to her grief, but her vision of saving lives and making a difference spurred her on.
I believe daring to love deeply takes courage. All could be lost in an instant. Yet, often it is the pain of losing someone precious to us that throws open the doors of our heart and untethers our soul. Ann Reeves Jarvis took her pain and channeled it for good.
Ann chose to organize and educate mothers about milk contamination and poor sanitary conditions, two leading causes of infant mortality. She started a club of women to raise money for medicine. She hired women to work in families where the mother suffered from tuberculosis or other health problems. She developed programs to inspect milk long before there were state requirements.
In 1861, our country began fighting the Civil War. The state of Virginia was divided. Ann, now the ripe age of 29, bucked convention and authority and organized her women’s club to feed and clothe both Union and Confederate soldiers.
When typhoid fever and measles broke out in the military camps, Ann and her club members nursed suffering soldiers, no matter what uniform they wore.
When the war finally ended in 1865, even with threats of violence against her, she organized an event to help begin the healing process for soldiers and families from both sides. Ann shared a message of unity and reconciliation. Bands played both “Dixie” and the “Star Spangled Banner,” and the event ended with everyone, north and south, joining together to sing “Auld Lang Syne.” Tears flowed and hearts healed.
Throughout her life, Ann continued calling for and organizing women to take an active political role in promoting peace. She called her organization The Mothers Day Work Clubs, and she called her healing event Mothers Friendship Day.
When Ann Jarvis died in 1905, it was Ann’s ninth child, Anna Jarvis, who never had children of her own, who organized the first Mother’s Day observances to honor her mom. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson officially set aside the second Sunday in May for Mother’s Day.
This year it’s estimated we’ll spend in the United States about $20 billion on cards, flowers, candies, gifts, and brunches for a holiday that grew out of a desire to mobilize and organize women to create peace, lower infant mortality, and tend to the wounded.
Mother’s Day changed with the death of my youngest son Resh Michael. My two older sons make sure I’m remembered and feel treasured, and since their brother’s passing, I feel even closer to each of them.
As for Michael, I still feel his presence and talk to him daily in spirit. Yet, I would give anything on Mother’s Day to have one of his sweet hugs, to see him bounding in from his last-minute dash to the corner store, with a big smile, a card and flowers in hand.
Since his death, my learning has been about how to keep growing and living joyfully from my broken-open heart. Mother’s Day has become a time for me to acknowledge The Divine Mother, or as I like to call her, Mother Nurture. She lives within each of us—male and female. She gives her love to us through the whisperings of her voice within our hearts. Such love is always there to comfort us, and to reassure us.
I do know that our world still cries out for that same nurturing energy that Ann Reeves Jarvis and her daughter Anna wanted to honor. A world transformed by motherly love could be a world where everyone receives what they need in the way of safety, food, shelter, love, acceptance, and freedom.
While appreciating the mothers closest to us is a lovely thing to do, we can also see this as a day to extend that ideal of motherly love beyond our own family circles, and spread it out into the world with random acts of kindness and no one would need to feel left out.
So, this Mother’s Day, I choose to honor this living, loving Divine Mother Nurture energy within each of us and celebrate the possibilities of her full expression even as I am basking in the love of my children and feeling both the sorrows and the joys of being a mom.