To many, mother’s day is a real challenge. For you women who have not had children, Mother’s Day is NOT your day. It is not the day
where you are praised for your parental abilities, your children fix you
breakfast, give you cards, and tell you how happy they are that you are their
mother.
Perhaps it is a weird day for mothers who have had children
in not such lovely circumstances such as “my son the serial killer” or “my
daughter the crack whore.” Perhaps you
are a mother grieving the loss of a child.
Perhaps you are a child who had an abusive and sick mother. Perhaps you never had children because of
deep psychological issues. Perhaps you
wanted children and couldn't. Perhaps you
are gay and the state wouldn't let you adopt.
It doesn't seem that the greeting card companies address all the flavors
of what mother’s day would mean to everyone.
What kind of card would say something lie, “Geez mom, we are so
different and although I suspect you secretly don’t want me to be happy living
outside of your paradigm, I understand you’re struggling and well, let’s try to
get along and respect each other as much as we can anyway.” To many others including men, it is a weird
and challenging day for other reasons.
So many things come in to our lives that make us have kids
or not have kids. Some are choices and
some are not. It does not make someone a
better person to have kids, although many have reported that the experience has
made them a better person. Others have
gotten strange and psychotic after having children. Let’s face it – life is so full of so many
possible experiences that we all can’t be lumped in to the same box and
expected to follow the same procreative path.
Many have learned to be better people by not having children and by
having other experiences.
To those mothers on mother’s day: happy mother’s day. To those mothers who took the job seriously
as stewardship of a person, I laud you.
To those non-mothers who decided they wouldn't be a good mother and didn't
have kids, I laud you. To those
accidental mothers who did the best they could, I laud you. To the mothers who did lousy jobs and are
working to repair the damage, I laud you.
But on this mother’s day, I’m still thinking about the
importance of nurturing. Although not
everyone is a biological mother, everyone including men is a mother in the role
of nurturer. Whether or not we choose to
nurture or not is our call. We have
opportunity after opportunity every day.
A downhearted friend, a child who needs a smile,
subordinates who need encouragement, a boss who needs compassion – all these
are tiny moments of opportunity to nurture.
In a world where we are realizing more and more that our
current trajectory has not been a sustainable one, we can find ways to step away
from the abuse of which we have been given stewardship. We can be fair and just – pay our employees
decent wages. We can consider our
actions of over-use of resources. For
those with scientific minds, we can create more industries of nurturing that
come out of environmental science. For
the politicians, we can consider the needs of our constituents instead of
taking the corporate handouts. For the
businesses, we can consider the lives of our employees over the greed of the
shareholders.
Every action can be an action of healing and nurturing or
one of abuse and evil. We can choose.
Happy Mother’s day everyone.
