A Look at Mother's Day

As I embarked on this article I stopped to wonder where the idea for Mothers day actually started. Everyone loves their mom but who set out to have a day made in their honor? While Mother's Day is celebrated in many places around the world we have three women here in the United States that we can attribute the legalizing of the day to. Julia Ward Howe, a social activist, intended the day to be a day where women united against the American Civil War. She campaigned for women to oppose the war and for women's rights. In 1873, 18 cities held a "Mothers Day for Peace". Julia's efforts were inspired by Anna M. Jarvis. Anna M. Jarvis had organized women during the Civil War to improve sanitation conditions and she worked to reconcile both sides of the war. When she passed in 1907, her daughter Ann Jarvis, took up her cause to create a nationally recognized day for Mothers.

After several years of letter writing and campaigning, in 1909 forty-five states observed Mothers day. People around the United States wore red and white carnations in honor of moms both living and deceased. In 1914 Woodrow Wilson made mothers day an official holiday. Sadly, Anna Jarvis died in 1948 regretting the way mothers day had become such a commercialized venture.

So this mothers day in honor of your mother and in honor of the women who started it all, try to think of a slightly less conventional way to honor and celebrate. Instead of buying a hallmark card and box of already made chocolates pick up your pen and write out a letter to your mom and thank her for all the things she's done for you. Another great way to give back and celebrate is to find out what causes your mother is involved in and offer to volunteer in some way with her.

To help inspire you I have collected some quotes that may remind you of your mother or someone who was special enough to you that you want to remember them on mother's day. Some of the quotes may seem a little unconventional but being unconventional is what makes some moms so special.

Thoughts for her children...

You are younger today than you ever will be again. Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow. -Anon.

I see their souls, and I hold them in my hands and because I love them they weigh nothing. -Pearl Bailey

Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console. To be understood as to understand. St. Francis of Assisi.

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed. Maria Montessori

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no others. Edmun Burke

Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us. Christian Nevell Bovee.

You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around-and why his parents will always wave back. William Tammeus.

There is only one pretty child in the world and every mother has it. Chinese Proverb.

If I had a single flower for every time I think about you, I could walk forever in my garden. Attributed to Claudia Ghandi

Thoughts for herself...

To devote a portion of one's leisure to do something for someone else is one of the highest forms of recreation. Gerald B. Fitzgerald.

What I spent, is gone; what I kept, I lost; but what I gave away will be mine forever. Ethel Percy Andrus

One of my ambitions used to be to throw a great screaming tempter tantrum. I can't see myself actually doing it, but I have fantasized it. Julie Andrews

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. Ayn Rand.

I pity weak women, good or bad, but I can't like them. A woman should be strong either in her goodness or her badness. Mae West.

Being a full time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs...since the payment is pure love. Mildred B. Vermonth

Thoughts from her children...

She was one of those happily created beings who please without effort, make friends everywhere, and take life so gracefully and easily that less fortunate souls are tempted to believe that such are born under a lucky star. -Louisa May Alcott

The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come. -William Hazlitt.

Loving is half of believing. -Victor Hugo

Today a new sun rises for me; everything lives, everything is animated, everything is seems to speak to me of my passion, everything invites me to cherish it. -Anne Lenclos

A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie. Tenneva Jordan

Use any of these quotes to create your own card, letter, or scrap book with photos of you and mom. A great and very touching gift would be a memory book where you write about all your favorite times together and add a few pictures or mementos from those times. Whatever you decide to do she is sure to love it, that is after all what mom's do. Happy Mothers Day!

References

Jessie Shiers, 2007, The quotable BITCH women who tell it like it really is.

Steve Edeger and Leslie Ann Gibson, 2006, The little book of positive quotations.