Mother's Day

I have been a little MIA lately.  We are in the midst of packing up our house and have been madly preparing for a moving sale to cut our crazy amount of junk WAY down!

First, I really want to thank everyone for all the positive feedback on the mental health and Celiac's awareness posts.  It took a lot for me to be able to share my dark, personal struggles but in the end it was very therapeutic to write it; and I was so happy to be able to share my good friend Melissa's story with you!

Secondly, tomorrow is Mother's Day.  This year marks the 100th anniversary of official celebrations of Mother's Day, and it actually has a very interesting and sad history.

Mother's Day is attributed to Anna Jarvis.  Anna's mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, started holding Mother's Day work clubs in West Virginia, comprised of women's groups for reasons such as: improving sanitary conditions and fighting infant mortality rates by addressing disease and milk contamination in the 1850s.  During the civil war years these women's groups tended to the wounded from the North and the South.  After the civil war, several women, including Ann Reeves Jarvis, organized picnics for a Mother's Friendship Day to promote pacifist strategies to bring together former enemies.  In West Virginia, Ann also started a Mother's Friendship Day for North and South loyalists.  

 (Photo of Anna Jarvis)

When Ann died in 1905, her daughter Anna organized the first observances of Mother's Day in 1908.  On May 10, 1908, several families gathered at a church in Grafton, West Virginia (Anna's hometown) for Mother's Day events.  This idea spread across the country until President Woodrow Wilson officially made Mother's Day the second Sunday in May in 1914.

(Church where first Mother's Day observances were held in West Virginia)

Anna Jarvis never had children of her own and according to historian Katharine Antolini, Mother's Day for Anna meant spending time with your mother and thanking her for everything she has done for you, not celebrating mothers everywhere.  It was meant to be a quiet, personal holiday spent with your own mother; but as is typical with most things, the holiday quickly became commercialized.  It became important to buy flowers, cards and candy and this greatly disturbed Anna.  

Anna started organizing boycotts and protested people and events that used Mother's Day for fundraising for charities, and she was even arrested for disturbing the peace.  Anna fought for the reform of Mother's Day to her original intent until the early 1940s.  When she died in 1948, at 84, she was a patient in Philadelphia's Marshall Square Sanitarium with dementia.  Instead of making a fortune off of Mother's Day as the credited creator, Anna gave her life to stop it from being so commercialized.

As a mother deeply entrenched in the trials of mothering four boys, I will take any thanks I can get from them!  But I think it's important to take in the small thanks you may receive daily (if you're lucky) like growly bear hugs, random kisses, a three year old telling me he loves me and I'm pretty, babies who don't want anyone but me, a seven year old who wants to cuddle.  These moments are fleeting and I need to enjoy them when they happen.  

So this Mother's Day, try to enjoy the little ways your kids tell you they love you every day, and look for those moments each day - especially the bad days; and don't forget to call your mom if you can!  

Happy Mother's Day 2014!  I wish all you mothers out there: quiet, solo bathroom trips, a day without yelling and uninterrupted ice cream consumption!  

Until next time! 

Information for this post was obtained from the article Mother's Day Turns 100: Its Surprisingly Dark History by Brian Handwerk for National Geograohic.  

Find the article here:  

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140508-mothers-day-nation-gifts-facts-culture-moms/