Heather Cox Richardson is an historian and professor at Boston College. If you’re not aware of her, she posts informative daily blogs on current and past history. On this mothers’ day, as we witness the mindless brutality of the war in Ukraine, and other places, as well as assaults on women’s rights and human rights, she reminds us that the beginning of Mothers’ Day originated from the cry of women who are left to carry on, work the fields, and work in the industries, while rearing their children and tending the wounded, all while their sons, husbands, brothers go to war to kill and maim or be killed or maimed.
Remember Peter, Paul and Mary’s song: Where have all the flowers gone… the fathers gone… the husbands gone…the soldiers gone — where have all the graveyards gone? When will they ever learn? The white male-dominated society continues to keep the war machine going. It continues to suppress women. It continues to deny equal rights to people of color. In some states, that dominating destructive energy is attempting to deny other rights including those of transgender people. And now, it’s trying to turn back the clock on women’s rights — which have never been equal — and strip away our rights to our own bodies, our own health, and our own personal choices.
I’ll not pretend to be as articulate as Dr. Richardson, but I share her article as a rally call to women. As we spiral towards self-destruction on many fronts from the environment to insane reptilian wars, it becomes more imperative that women take the helm — not the Marjorie Greene Taylors of the world — God no! — but women who can actually carry a heavier load in tough times with patience, and mercy, nurture, love, deep caring, through dialogue and love. Through a labor no man could suffer through, remember we, women, bring life into this world. And yet “man taketh it away.”
Thank you, Heather Cox Richardson for reminding us that Mothers’ Day is not a Hallmark Holiday, but was the beginning of a women’s empowerment movement which is still grinding on, two steps forward and, it appears, three steps backward.
I also encourage you to watch or read the PBS interview of Hillary Clinton and Alyse Nelson, Vital Voices’ president and CEO, a nonprofit organization that Clinton started with Madeleine Albright. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/hillary-clinton-discusses-war-in-ukraine-democracy-in-the-u-s-and-future-of-roe-v-wade. Again, it’s an informative interview.
With that, I will leave the talking to those more educated than I.