Reclaiming Mother's Day: Liberate the Creatrix

Motherhood Makes the World Go Round

Historians claim that the holiday of Mother's Day emerged from the ancient festivals dedicated to mother goddess.In the ancient Greek empire, Rhea, the wife of Cronus, and mother of Gods and Goddesses, was worshipped.

In Rome too, Cybele, a mother Goddesses, was worshipped, as early as 250 BC. It was known as Hilaria, and it lasted for three days, called the Ides of March, that is from March 15 to March 18. However, neither of them meant for the honoring of our immediate mothers, as is done in our Mother's Day.

Rather more closely aligned to our Mother's Day, is the "Mothering Sunday". England observed "Mothering Sunday", or the "Mid-Lent-Sunday, on the fourth Sunday in Lent.

In the United States, Julia Ward Howe, (who wrote the lyrics to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic"), suggested the idea of Mother's Day in 1872. Howe envisioned the holiday as being dedicated to world peace.

The first Mother's Day celebrations in the USA took place in West Virginia in 1908, at the urging of Ana Jarvis. Ana's own mother had passed away several years earlier, and it had been her dream to reunite families divided by the Civil War with a day dedicated to Mothers. The idea quickly caught on, and in 1914 Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday of May to be the official Mother's Day.

In the years since its inception, the holiday has spread worldwide. Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia and Belgium now celebrate Mother's Day on the same day as the United States.



Liberating the Creatrix: Reclaiming Mother's Day
By Sia of Full Circle

Empowering, Not Idealizing, Mothers:

This day can be empowering. It can remind our mothers to honor their spirit, their time, their bodies, their energy, and their minds. May they cherish their own dreams, as well as the dreams of their children. And may they ask for help, demand respect, model patience, good boundaries, and kindness, and expect the same in return. They deserve it.

The Red and the White:

Another woman, Anna Jarvis, is usually credited with creating the official Mother’s Day. The media paints her (when it mentions her at all) as some pious, Victorian snob. The truth is quite different. According to the Women’s History Project,
(http://www.nwhp.org/events/moms-day/history-of-moms-day.html) she wanted to honor her mother, (also named Anna Jarvis) who “as a young Appalachian homemaker, organized "Mother's Work Days" to improve the sanitation and avert deaths from disease-bearing insects and seepage of polluted water.” This is powerful stuff, especially when you consider the role of water in the worship of the Mother Goddess. The Mystica website (http://www.themystica.org/) notes that:

Seas, fountains, ponds, and wells were always thought as feminine symbols….. Such passages….were often thought as leading to the underground womb…and water, like love, was (is) essential to the life forces of fertility and creativity,
without which the psychic world as well as the material world would become an arid desert, the waste land.

As a tribute to her mother, Anna Jarvis offered flowers at rallies. She chose carnations, her mother’s favorite flower. She used white carnations to represent the sweetness, purity, and endurance of motherly love. Over time, red carnations came to signify that one's mother is living, while white carnations came to mean one's mother has died. Consider using these colors in your

Mother Goddess rituals this season.

Both Howe and Jarvis wanted to honor mothers but that was not their only goal. Both women – and this is important – sought honor the voices and the power of mothers. As the old phrase says: “In an age when women were told to sit down and be quiet, they did neither.”

Older Versions of Mother’s Day:

It is thought that some of the earliest historical Mother's Day celebrations occurred in ancient Greece to honor Rhea, (http://www.goddessmyths.com/Paintings%201999-2000.html) who is both a moon and bird Goddess. Originally from ancient Crete, she was known and celebrated in both Rome and Greece as the mother of the ancient Gods. Her festival was celebrated in the spring.

In England, the annual celebration is known as Mothering Sunday.(http://englishculture.allinfoabout.com/features/mothering-sunday.html) As the English Culture website notes:

In the old days, servants would be given time-off and worshippers would present offerings to their Mother Church. It was an especially important day in the calendars of apprentices, farm labourers and girls in service, because it meant that they could return home and share a meal with their parents.

This holiday was sometimes the only time that workers could return home and see their families. No wonder it was so important.

Sadly, Mother's Day in America soon became an enormously commercial holiday. Disillusioned, Miss Jarvis spent the rest of her life trying to reverse what she played such a major role in creating.

Reclaiming Mother’s Day:

Consider also this question on Mother’s Day: What would the world be like if we treated children and families as if they really mattered? Some people think it would look a lot like Sweden. (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0838/is_2001_Nov-Dec/ai_100807143) I can tell you one thing; it would look a lot different than it does now.

If you would like to honor your mother and all mothers, including the Mother Goddess, you might wish to wear a red or a white carnation to honor those women who inspire you.

At the same time, why not do something positive for your neighborhood or the World Family on this day? Mother’s Day can be a day of action. Whatever your cause, you’ll find events and marches on this day. After all, what better day could there be to fight City Hall than the day dedicated to the original Uppity Woman?

You might also choose to do something sacred-silly with your friends and family. Design your own rituals to honor this day in a way that is meaningful to you. If the day is about rest, then rest. You earned it. It can also be a day of simple fun instead of overspending - you decide.

Try something radical or different – it doesn’t matter what it is, just spread your wings. Speak out, act up, find healing, take a class, or go on a hike and say “hi” to Momma Gaia. She might have something to say to you.

Use this day to tell your truth and compose your life. Tell your family story (the real one) . Make plans beyond this year; think two years, five years, ten years in advance. It’s your life to create, after all. And then calendar some time for yourself, not just once a year, but on a regular basis.

Below is a list of books and websites that celebrate motherhood and tell the truth about it at the same time. Many contain essays by mothers themselves. May these inspire and support you on your path.

Telling the Truth:

Our mothers are asked to measure up to an impossible, ridiculous ideal. This “Mommy Myth” effectively keeps them locked in place, and unable to be themselves for fear of looking like a bad mother. It does not allow them to tell the truth about their lives, both the good and the bad, to each other. Instead it forces them to be isolated, guilt ridden and powerless and it keeps their partners, their children, and the culture from seeing them truly, as women and as people.

As a result of this myth, motherhood often comes as a great shock to many women, because they have never known what it really means to be a mom, how false the ideal is, or how little real help there is out there for them as mothers, once they begin this great work.

So, let’s allow our mothers to step down off that pedestal. Once they get their feet on firm ground, there’s no telling how far they can go.

Dysfunctional Family Feud:

Families, as John Bradshaw says, are a bloody business. For some of us, this holiday is an awful mix of obligations, expectations, resentments (spoken and unspoken) blame, disappointment and guilt.

It’s as if someone mixed the gunpowder of anger with the sugar of denial and served it disguised to us as wholesome food. It’s no wonder then, that any mention of family makes some people want to explode and others, ill.

So let’s be honest. Some of us came from horribly dysfunctional families. Some have suffered neglect and others have survived sexual, emotional, or physical abuse. Some have spent years trying to work out what went wrong, and wondered if it was something they did. (It wasn’t) .

Many of those harmed have found healing and forgiveness over time, often through the use of ritual, private therapy and support groups. Others are still struggling with this burden. Sadly, many Pagans carry this dysfunctional family energy into their groups and circles and cause destruction there. (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0838/is_2001_Nov-Dec/ai_100807143)
. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can come to terms with our childhood and stop the cycle of pain. It begins with facing the facts and telling the truth. It takes courage and commitment and support. But it’s possible.

The Creatrix: An Archetype for All of Us:

Some of us don’t have children (either by choice or by chance) so we honor the Creatrix.

The Creatrix is connected to Gaia. She creates her own life as well as great friendships, arts and crafts, loving homes, beauty, peace, prosperity, and opportunities. She empowers friends and family and is, herself, empowered. She cares for other and she protects those who cannot protect themselves. She is a mistress of learning, knowledge, and culture. She has many forms including that of Artemis, Hestia, Athena, and Bridget. She can stand alone or with a partner. It’s her choice. We know her by the blessings that flow from her hand and the ideas that come from her mind and heart. This form of creation is worth knowing and honoring, as well.

Let us now honor the full power of the Mother Goddess and the Creatrix on Mother’s Day and make it our own.

Goddess Bless,
Sia


Motherhood as a movement

By Katherine Ellison

It's a relatively obscure fact that even the saccharine modern bonanza for the U.S. floral and greeting card industries we call Mother's Day originated in the early years of women's political enfranchisement, and in an explicitly political context.
Mothers have been celebrated since ancient times. The Greeks held festivals for Rhea, mother of the gods; the Romans honored Cybele, a mother goddess. The 17th-century British paid tribute to the Madonna, and, by extension, their own mothers, on Mothering Sunday, the fourth Sunday in Lent. But the U.S. holiday was initially intended less to honor mothers as such than to bring them together to work for change.

During the Civil War years, a West Virginia teacher and homemaker named Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis organized Mothers' (sic) Work Days to improve local sanitary conditions, and, in the post-war years, help reconcile families whose sons had fought on opposite sides. In a separate effort, beginning in 1872, the suffragist Julia Ward Howe, a mother of six and the author of ``The Battle Hymn of the Republic,'' also lobbied for a national mothers' day, which she hoped would be dedicated to peace. After Jarvis' death in 1905, her daughter, Anna, pledged to carry on the tradition, doggedly campaigning to nationalize the holiday.

In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson acceded and declared Mother's Day a national holiday, to occur on the second Sunday in May. This new holiday placed more emphasis on a mother's family role than on her potential activism. Businesses soon appropriated the occasion, infuriating Jarvis' daughter. Toward the end of her life, she even filed a lawsuit to try to stop the celebrations and reportedly was once arrested for trying to disrupt a mothers' convention where women were selling white carnations to raise money. She protested that she had meant the holiday to be ``a day of sentiment, not profit.''

Still, whatever cheap bouquets and hollow tributes they've had to endure each spring, mothers have continued to follow their activist impulses when given sufficient incentive. Again and again, they've exploited society's cliches about them for their own ends. On various occasions, for instance, mothers have used the image of the non-confrontational mom as a weapon to combat war.

During the Vietnam War years, women in Southern California joined forces as the benevolently dogged Another Mother for Peace, which soon became a prominent national movement. ``Our appeal was that as a mother, you bring these wonderful people into the world, and you really feel you must make it a good place for them to live,'' Gerta Katz, one of the founders, told me in 2003. At the time, Katz, then well into her 70s, was helping the group revive its operations to oppose the U.S. war in Iraq.

Mothers quite often are at least initially moved to organize only after they've suffered a personal loss. It's almost as if the new reserves of mental capacity and drive summoned to care for a new child are so powerful that they must head someplace else, once that child is gone or compromised. So it was in 1979, when Candace Lightner, whose 13-year-old daughter was killed by a repeat drunk driver, and Cindi Lamb, whose 5-month-old daughter became one of America's youngest quadriplegics in a similar accident, formed MADD [Mothers Against Drunk Driving], which soon claimed chapters throughout the United States, and eventually also in Canada, Australia, Sweden and Japan.

Similarly, concern for her young children's recurring health problems spurred Lois Gibbs, an upstate New York homemaker, to organize others in her neighborhood, known as Love Canal, after she learned that her home was sitting atop 21,000 tons of buried chemical waste. Gibbs subsequently became known as the Mother of Superfund Legislation, the federal U.S. laws she inspired, which regulated cleanups of other massive toxic dump sites.

Still, although Lightner, Lamb and Gibbs [acted] only after they had painfully personal reasons to do so, other mothers have been drawn together by the sheer increased anxiety about the world in which they were bringing up their children.

So it is with Mothers Acting Up, launched in May of 2002 in Boulder, Colo., which encourages its members to contact their elected officials on issues such as global warming, genetically modified foods and spending on education. C.C. Pelmas, the mother of two boys and one of the group's leaders, says she had increasingly felt challenged by the irony of worrying about such things as healthy lunches and a safe neighborhood, ``while letting the larger hopes and desires (for a healthy planet, a world full of joy, and a knowledge that all children around the world are being well-taken care of) lie deep inside me with no voice or validation. I don't need to speak to every mother to know that these desires are universal.''

This sentiment squares with [philosopher] Sara Ruddick's view of ``maternal thinking'' as a distinct worldview, and set of values, arising from the daily work of caretaking and what she calls ``preservative love.'' According to her hopeful argument, the practice can amount to repetitive submission to Gandhian principles of non-violence such as reconciliation and resistance to injustice.

As late as 2001, in an essay written just a few days after the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, Ruddick reaffirmed her hope that ''people who make the work of caring for children an ongoing and serious part of their working lives may acquire ways of thinking and acting that help to create and sustain a culture of peace.'' Even so, in an interview in 2004, Ruddick sadly conceded there has been little actual proof that parenting, in itself, makes mothers or fathers more peace-loving.

At times, it almost seems like the reverse is true. [Consider] the 2004 U.S. election, when, according to one polling firm, the majority of women, 51 percent, voted for the Democratic Party challenger Sen. John Kerry, but an even stronger majority of married mothers, 56 percent, voted for the incumbent, George W. Bush.

Intense speculation focused during the campaign on the political influence of so-called security moms, who, pundits said, were seeking a decisive leader in the new era of terrorism fears. Bush's strategist, Karl Rove, was reported to believe that a shift among women with children under 18 was a major factor in the Republican Party's historic triumph in the 2002 midterm elections, in which Bush became the first Republican in a century to see his party gain seats in an off-year election. ``Since 9/11,'' said Debbie Creighton, a 34-year-old Santee mother of two who voted for Bill Clinton twice before leaning toward Bush, ``all I want in a president is a person who is strong.''

Although women at large have at least since the 1980s favored Democrats -- accounting for a famous ``gender gap'' -- married mothers have long been more conservative. They are also more reliable voters, registering and turning out in greater proportions than single women.

``What drives them are their children,'' says public-opinion consultant Ethel Klein, who organized focus group research on mothers in those years. This rang true especially in 2004, when a group of voters were asked if they feared that a member of their family would be victimized in another terrorist attack. Just 17 percent of men, but 43 percent of women and 53 percent of mothers with children under 18 -- said yes.

KATHERINE ELLISON is the author of ``The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter,'' which was published recently. This is an excerpt from that book. Copyright 2005.

"Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living."
-- Mary Harris "Mother" Jones


Mother's Day born under proud banner of pacifism

SUSAN FEATHERS WILLIAMS
Tucson Citizen

The Mother's Day we celebrate Sunday is a far cry from the intended commemoration envisioned by its founder, Anna Marie Reeves Jarvis. Jarvis launched the Mothers Day Work Clubs with her brother, a doctor, in the mid-1850s to teach people sanitation and hygiene to prevent disease.

When the Civil War broke out, the clubs' women refused to distinguish between Union or Confederate soldiers, ministering to wounded on both sides.After the war, Jarvis established Mothers Friendship Day in communities where men had fought on both sides, to facilitate reconciliation and promote healing in community life.

Jarvis grew up listening to her mother advocate for peace and observing her leadership in church and community. Her mother wanted someone to establish a day to honor women's work in creating a healthy society.

When her mother passed away May 9, 1905, Jarvis began her campaign to establish a national day to recognize the important work of women as peacemakers and cultural leaders.

Uncompromising in her efforts, Jarvis spoke publicly, wrote letters and lobbied legislators. In 1910, she convinced the governor of West Virginia to proclaim a state Mother's Day. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law a resolution making the second Sunday in May the national observance of Mother's Day.

Jarvis's mother also had inspired Julia Ward Howe, the poet known for writing the lyrics to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

When the Franco-Prussian war broke out in 1870, Howe was determined to establish an international mothers' peace day.

Believing that war inflicted needless suffering, she wrote:

Arise then ... women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly: "We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
... In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And 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.

Howe failed to launch a mother's day for peace, but Jarvis succeeded 44 years later.

Jarvis chose a white carnation as the symbol of Mother's Day. Its botanical name means "divine flower."

For the rest of her life, Jarvis promoted Mother's Day as an observance of women's work for peace, justice and reconciliation. But as the day became commercialized, Jarvis grew disheartened. Just before her death, she remarked that she wished she had never established it.

The Mother's Day she worked so hard to create had become a romanticized version, lacking its grand ideal to promote women's work for peace and equality among people and nations.

Folklore about the carnation has the flower's origin from the tears of Mary, as she watched her son drag the cross. His life was devoted to reconciliation.

Jarvis may not have known this when she chose Dianthus caryophyllus as the symbol of Mother's Day. But nothing could have been more perfect.

Susan Feathers Williams (info@writeforchange.com) is a Tucson writer who wrote this column in memory of her mother, Millie Feathers.



A Tribute to Moms Wild & Wonderful
from Defenders of Wildlife

This Mother's Day, we salute moms wild and wonderful. Like their human counterparts, animal mothers love, protect, and sacrifice for their young. Our kudos to moms of the wild who provide:
Food

A human baby's hungry cry elicits a mother's urge to feed and comfort. So too does a Western gull chick's pecking of its mother's red bill spot or a wolf pup's licking of the alpha female's furry muzzle. The young chick or wolf's request is generally answered by the mother passing food from her own stomach to the mouth of her offspring.

Shelter & Warmth

Like human mothers who bundle their babies in warm, fuzzy blankets and hold them close during winter, millions of animal mothers instinctively protect their young from the cold. Alligator and crocodile mothers cover their buried clutches of eggs with vegetation that radiates heat as it rots, keeping nest temperatures within tolerable limits.

Penguin mothers ‚ and fathers for that matter ‚ hold their eggs on their feet to keep them above the frozen land. Mother bears, wolves, and foxes build dens to shelter vulnerable young from the elements.

Affection

Affection is often credited as a wholly human trait, but it is not absent from other sectors of the animal kingdom. Human mothers use baby talk and gentle caresses; chimpanzee, wolf and cat mothers regularly spend hours grooming their children. While licking certainly keeps the young clean, it is also likely a mother-child bonding ritual.

Sacrifice

Many characterize motherhood in terms of sacrifice. Human mothers put aside promising careers or save "pin money" for their children's college education. Animal mothers sometimes make astounding sacrifices, forfeiting their own lives for their children's well-being. Sockeye salmon, for instance, go through a metamorphosis on their trek to spawning grounds that radically changes the color and shape of their heads. So serious is this change that they can not eat, literally giving up their lives so that their eggs have a chance to mature. In fact, the mothers' spent bodies actually become part of a food chain that later benefits their developing young.

Other examples abound, from the killdeer's faking broken wings to lead predators away from their nests to female northern elephant seals investing a full third of their body weight during a month of constantly nursing their new born pups. And lastly, Belding's ground squirrel mothers risk their lives by giving alarm calls, which make them highly visible, when predators get near their children and relatives. These animal moms are clearly laying it all on the line.

http://www.defenders.org/



Recommended Reading for Mothers:

Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race and Themselves
edited by Camile Peri and Kate Moses

Hip Momma’s Survival Guide
Ariel Gore and Ellen Forney

Mother Leads Best: 50 Women Who Are Changing the Way Organizations Define Leadership
Moe Grzelakowski

Mothers Who Think: Tales of Reallife Parenthood
edited by Camile Peri and Kate Moses.

Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
Judith Warner

The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Use Smarter
Katherine Ellison

The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Hurt Women
Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels

The Price of Motherhood: Why The Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued
Ann Crittenden

The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars: Who Decides What Makes A Good Mother
Miriam Peskowitz

The Second Shift
Arlie Russell Hochschild