Mother's Day Reconsidered

More mothering is needed

One of the hardest realizations in life, and one of the most liberating, is that our mothers are neither saints nor saviors — they are just people who, however messy or painful our childhood may have been and however complicated the adult relationship, have loved us the best way they knew how with the cards they were dealt and the tools they had.

It is a whole life’s work to accept this elemental fact and a life’s triumph to accept it not with bitterness but with love. ~ Maria Popov, The Marginalian

Mother’s Day is a complicated mess of emotions, memories, and experiences for me. The expectations associated with it were so intense over my life that the 2022 Mother’s Day - five months after my mother’s death - I felt both sadness and relief. No pressure to call my mom before noon so that she wouldn’t become upset, no obligatory “Happy Mother’s Day,”  and no resentment over her belief that my phone call on the second Sunday of May each year was mandatory to prove my love for her (never mind that I called her just about every week). Perhaps that sounds harsh, but holidays carried a burden of responsibility of proving to my mother that she was loved. On holidays, if I failed to call early enough, she would call me and, in a child-like voice, greet me by saying, “I guess you don’t love me anymore.” 

She was a young mother: pregnant and forced to marry at age 17, she smothered me with love when I was born six months later. But her own need for love, affection, and acceptance dominated her life and, thus, my life. Her mother, a bitter and neglectful mother who was a severe alcoholic, caused so much pain for my mom that she didn’t seem to demonstrate grief or emotion when my grandmother died. She told me several times that she hated her. 

That’s a heavy burden, an intense Mother Wound¹, to carry around for a lifetime. 

My relationship with my mother was full of contradictions. My childhood was chaotic, forcing me to take an adult role in our small family at an early age. But I loved my mom despite the poor choices she made. The need for love is powerful, and I could see the neglected little girl in her. During some of the moments of chaos, she occasionally cried about just wanting someone to love her. Like all of us, she desired a happy family. She loved people and, later in her life, adored her cats and dogs, fostering rescues and sending money to every non-profit that flashed photos of abused animals. She loved her daughters, but the damage from our childhoods took its toll on our relationships with each other. She lived with shame, anxiety, fear, regret, and despair until she died. It took several decades for me to realize that she did the best she could and a bit more time to hold her in love despite the harsh memories of my youth. Despite the troubled chaos of our young family, I have realized what a gift it was to be loved by my mother. Love is never a given, no matter the expectations of a relationship.

The History of Two Different Mother’s Days

The original Mothers’ Day (note the plural use) was developed after the atrocities of the American Civil and Franco-Prussian Wars convinced writer, poet, suffragist, and pacifist, Julia Ward Howe (the poet who wrote the words for the Battle Hymn of the Republic) that women needed to be in charge of politics and use that power to create change in our societies. Women had little political power in the late 1800s, and the movement did not garner much action. 

Drawing of Julia Ward Howe by John Elliott ( Wikimedia Commons)

Excerpt from Howe’s 1870 Proclamation for Mothers’ Day movement:

“In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at 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.”

West Virginian Anna Jarvis offered a different motivation for a national Mother’s Day in 1905. Devastated by her mother's death, a peace activist who dedicated her energy to improving the health and sanitation conditions of Civil War soldiers and in her region’s communities, Anna wanted to honor her mother’s legacy and coordinated her hometown's first Mother’s Day celebration in 1908. Its success motivated her to advocate for it to become a national holiday. A conversation with her mother likely inspired the notion of a day to celebrate mothers: her mother wanted one day a year when mothers did not have to work in any way. Nine years later, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation designating a Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. 

Anna Jarvis (Wikimedia Commons)

Anna hoped that the day would be a day of reflection on the work, sacrifices, and love that mothers contributed to the nation. Over the next few decades, Anna was dismayed at how for-profit companies commercialized a day of reflection and celebration by promoting cards, flowers, and gifts as evidence of recognition and love for mothers. She spent the rest of her life organizing boycotts, and in 1943, she began the process of trying to rescind the proclamation of Mother’s Day. The process was never completed because she was placed in a sanitarium…her “stay” paid for by the floral and card industry. ²

I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mothers day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it. ~Ann Reeves Jarvis (Mother of Anna Jarvis)

Corporate Influence Continues

This past week, my inbox was filled with marketing from companies offering the ideal gift for mothers. The commercialization of Mother's Day is mindblowing: in 2023, Americans spent over 36 billion dollars on gifts, cards, and experiences for their mothers. Of that amount, over 3 billion was spent on cards. Anna Jarvis complained about the corporate replacement for genuine sentimentality:  “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself.” 

Photo by Ijaz Rafi on Unsplash

My conflicted emotions about our modern celebration of Mother’s Day are also rooted in my corporate work experience. For 18 years, I worked in the hospitality industry, a fancy way of saying I served food and drinks. When I was hired for my last position by a hotel chain, I signed an employment contract that required me to work Easter, Mother’s Day, and Thanksgiving because the hotel offered all-you-can-eat holiday buffets. These were long days of carrying dirty plates and refilling water glasses. Hours of serving people who often didn’t see me as a human, much less the daughter of a mother or the mother of a child. It was a challenge for me to be agreeable, much less happy, about waiting on families while my own waited at home for me. On my way home from a holiday buffet shift, I often stopped at the grocery store and saw adults frantically buying flowers, cards, and bottles of wine at the last minute. I wondered, in judgment, how is that thoughtful? And, of course, like most of our other holidays, there is the one-size-fits-all repetitive customer service humdrum of holiday well wishes: “Happy Mother’s Day” said the bank employee who didn’t know whether I was a mother or not.

We tend to view the word mother as a noun, but I propose that we view it as a verb. To mother is to nurture and care for others: children, partners, parents, siblings, animals, plants, landscapes, and the Earth. Frankly, the world desperately needs more mothering. I am sticking with Julia Ward Howe’s version of Mothers’ Day.

1. https://www.attachmentproject.com/psychology/mother-wound/

2. https://www.npr.org/2016/05/08/477257949/take-a-second-to-salute-anna-jarvis-the-mother-of-mothers-day