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The Original Mother's Day Vision
May, 2005
By Donna Zajonc

I have been hearing from citizens across the political spectrum: conservative, progressive, Republican, Democrat and from rural and urban areas who share a collective grief about our current partisan political system. I frequently hear, "Why bother?"

The origin of Mother's Day is not a Hallmark moment, but an inspiring story of women who said, "We must bother!" and refused to let their grief immobilize them. During spring, when new buds are bursting forth, allow this first Mother's Day story to inspire you to nurture a new vision of how you want to help transform our political system.

What we know as Mothers' Day grew out of Mothers' Work Days, begun in 1858 in West Virginia. Anna Reeves Jarvis, a local teacher and church member who wanted to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her community, organized the first Mother's Work Day.

Ten years later, Julia Ward Howe, a Boston poet, pacifist, suffragist, and famous author of the lyrics to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," organized a day encouraging mothers to rally for peace. Stunned by the ravage of the Civil War, she believed women bore the loss of human life more harshly than anyone else.

She saw some of the worst effects of the war that killed and maimed the soldiers. She worked with the widows and orphans of soldiers on both sides of the conflict, and realized that the effects of war go beyond the killing of soldiers in battle.

In 1870 she used her notoriety to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors and wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation. Here is her powerful first verse:

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."

The poem continues...

Influenced by Julia Howe Ward's work in Boston, Anna Jarvis, the young Appalachian who organized the Women's Work Days, continued her work by organizing women after the Civil War to build better sanitary conditions for both sides.

In 1905 when Anna Jarvis died, her daughter (also named Anna) continued the cause on behalf of her mother. Anna is credited as the force behind creating the first official Mother's Day in the United States. She lobbied prominent politicians including Presidents Taft and Roosevelt and in 1914, Anna's hard work paid off when President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation recognizing Mother's Day as a national holiday.

Anna Jarvis and her daughter, as well as Julia Howe Ward, did not allow their war-time grief to stop them. They transformed their grief into positive action. In fact, they used the War as an opportunity to give birth to a better way of life for their communities and their world.

The key to creating constructive action in the world is to accept our resignation as a stage of development so we can prepare to move forward in spite of it.

Our sadness, in small doses, is healthy because emotion prepares the soil for seeds of hope to take root. You would not feel sadness if you did not care. So the question is: what is it that you care about?

I have discovered that individuals cannot hear a hopeful message if they have not yet had enough of their hopeless, "why bother" conversations. Here are a few tips to help you move through your political resignation:

• Notice your self talk and the form your resignation has taken on. What emotions accompany your resignation?
• How has your resignation served you?
• Thank your resignation for having served its purpose.
• Now identify what it is you really care about.
• What new vision do you want to birth?

During these polarizing political times, it is important to follow the example of women and men who came before us. Anna Jarvis and Julia Ward Howe modeled for us how to focus on what we want to contribute to the world rather than being paralyzed by our inner voices that say "Why bother?"

On this Sunday, May 8, enjoy Mother's Day with those that you love and know that it is the result of visionaries who used their sadness to create a day of celebration!

Mother's Day Proclamation
By Julia Ward Howe
1870

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
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.

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Donna Zajonc is a Political Leadership Coach, a former three-term Oregon Legislator and was her party's nominee for Secretary of State. She has also managed several campaigns including a highly visible governor's campaign. Donna challenges her clients to prepare for public office with the same rigor that all professionals seek.