Today has been stuffed with blessings, large and small, and it’s only mid-afternoon. I’m grateful for a husband who orchestrated a perfect morning, I’m grateful for kids who play along because they know it matters to me, and I’m grateful to have Amelia home—I know this is a special, unplanned gift and do not take any of it for granted.
Pictured below are My Reasons and me, then and now, with baby sister, Sarah, making a sweet cameo appearance. Having a hand in raising Amelia, Peyton and Garner will always be my proudest, most joy-giving pursuit. Each of my kids has given me, and continues to give me, the double-gift of both growing me into the person/mother I am, and imparting a real depth of insight into just how strong and beautiful my own Mother, Judy, is. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!
Last night Garner asked us: “Who said ‘today is Mother’s Day’ and made it Mother’s Day?” The question got me curious and thinking, so I did a little research. The day, it turns out, has a sort of strange and non-linear history apart from the current American “Hallmark Holiday” many of us have come to celebrate. Most interesting, I think, is that at the root of what eventually became Mother’s Day as we know it, is the Mother’s Day Proclamation, penned in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe—activist, feminist, suffragette and author (most famously of The Battle Hymn of the Republic). Howe’s proclamation, written in the aftermath of the Civil War, was intended as a rally cry to all mothers—but really to all women: a call to rise up and promote world peace in the wake of terrible, costly conflict.
Mother’s Day, then, is an honoring of not just motherhood itself, but of the strength, power and potential of women to come together as a group, to be creators of a new narrative and architects of positive, lasting change.
I like thinking about Mother’s Day in this way (and am grateful to Garner for inspiring me to better understand the day’s underpinnings) because it’s inclusive of the myriad ways all of the women in my life—many of whom are mothers and many of whom are not, or are not yet—have fed into and impacted the way I am a mother. I am grateful for the wise counsel and beautiful example set by so many women during the course of my life, and grateful for the chance to celebrate them today. All of them!
Today, My Reasons and Mother’s Day are my joy. #joyinplace
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