If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
This mother's day we raise our chocolate treats, in all their glorious shapes and cacao content, in celebration of our mothers, real and symbolic.
We remember the women with many children, young children, a child who has recently died, those who have experienced miscarriage, infertility or painful births, those who have broken relationships with children and women who have not experienced motherhood at all.
In the context of our larger family: my father's family is a collection of alpha males ... and females! My mother's family is a collection of ... well, gentle souls who choose to live tranquil lives, far from the madding crowd!
On this Mother's Day, it is hard not to feel inspired and hopeful by the robust and sophisticated grassroots movement building of moms across America who have organized to fight for safer gun law legislation.
Never an easy lesson of life, loss is experienced by all. And for those of us who have lost a loved one, certain holidays can become excruciating reminders of the persons we so dearly miss.
Every day is Mother's Day to Cher -- and sister Georganne LaPiere. Their beautiful 86-year-old mom, Georgia Holt, knows a little something about being a loving mother, caring for her two daughters between eight marriages -- and standing alone, quite often, as a single parent during their childhood.
Granted, most mothers aren't as adamantly opposed to this day as mine. But if you're not the card-giving type -- or if you are, but are also looking for more socially conscious commemorations of motherhood -- here are seven fine activist ways to honor the mothers of America.
We're going to brunch and we're gonna have a good time, and you're going to lay off the screaming and the tantrums and the defiance and everything else for the day.
I haven't long been a mother, but what I learned about Mother's Day in the 29 years I spent being a daughter and granddaughter is that it isn't just a holiday meant for receiving honor. It's a unique opportunity to offer others much-needed care.
Even if Daddy isn't here to help you pick out a gift, or even if you feel bad if your teacher didn't let you make a card for me, it's going to be okay. There are better things you can give me.
For most mothers, many of the determining health factors are in play long before the pregnancy. Diet throughout life and the stress level throughout life have a strong bearing on whether the mother has a healthy pregnancy. This is why it's so critical that we have healthy communities.
Whether a woman is a mother today, or a mother to be, her health is paramount -- both for her own productivity and quality of life, and that of the next generation. One way that we can help to support women -- and their children -- is by ensuring that all mothers receive the essential health services they need, including for HIV.
My suggestion? Mother's Day should start at midnight the night before. No, you might protest. I need my sleep. Um, actually, in my model, you don't. Because you have nothing to get up for. That's right, ladies, you are going to sleep.
Today I want to write about mothers: not my own mother or my grandmother this time, but the mothers who are in my life and help me be a mother. They help me be a better mother. They help me be a better person. They are my village.
This morning, it occurs to me as I type these words that this too, strangely enough, is a kind of ritual, a kind of filial impulse to reconcile Mother's world and my own. The solemnity of the act -- my fingers gliding on the keyboard, my mind on things ethereal -- is something akin, at last, to my mother's morning prayers.
