Cover Page Thoughts Graphics Guestbook Links Other Holidays
 
 
 
This poem is dedicated to the Seattle Older Women's League (OWL). For several years WHEEL homeless women's organizing group has made a tradition of serving a Mother's Day Brunch for homeless women. Mother's Day 2000 came during our Tent City 3 campaign. When we said that we would be unable to organize the brunch that year, OWL came forward and brought brunch out to the tents.

Mother's Day in Tent City

Are we children on one side of midnight,
adults on the other?
Women until the kindling of one cell,
then instant mothers?

If humanity wants children
we must raise them
in the flesh and the spirit of women,
in the flesh and the spirit of men.

We must all become mothers
to each other
before the womb of the world
will kindle any future.

~Anitra L. Freeman

 
 

This is not a traditional Mother's Day page of flowers and sentiment.

Mother's Day is a time for celebrating our mothers and, like Thankgiving, it is a time to count our blessings and remember all the positive aspects of our relationship. But, like Thanksgiving, many of us carry historical connotations that affect our emotions on this day. Mothers, like any other human beings, are complex creatures, and our feelings toward them are loving / angry / griefstruck / joyful / terrifying / hopeful ... all the emotions of life.

I believe we build stronger relationships when we recognize all of the feelings between us, not just those that fit into a Hallmark card. And our relationship with Mother is the first and most important relationship in our lives: whether we are male or female, whether our mother is kind or cruel, whether we embrace her or reject her.

But of all aspects of Mother's Day, one I believe needs way more attention is the Mother in us all.

In these pages I have collected my own poems on my mother, and on mothering; WHEEL's celebration of Mother's Day and Valentine's Day as holidays to honor the dignity of all women; some flowers and other graphics; and links to other Mother's Day pages both traditional and non-traditional.

Mother's Day is celebrated in different ways, on different days, in many cultures around the world. Like Thanksgiving, you can take any day to stop and think about Mothers.

 
 
Cover Page Thoughts Graphics Guestbook Links Other Holidays
Designed from photography by Catherine van der Goes