In Celebration of Fierce & Tender Love

For All The Women Who Keep Changing The World (Then & Now)

“I am convinced the socks and left hand mittens that go missing turn into Pyrex container lids overnight while everyone is sleeping.”

I’m writing this post on Mother’s Day.  It is a lovely morning in May, the redbuds are blooming and the trees are that fleeting shade of spring green, which is one of my favorite color combinations right up there with the tan and brown of wren eggs, the bright purple buds and bold blue blooms of Virginia bluebells and my small daughter’s soft carmel curls against her damp olive skin when she slept. Today I remember the skin of my own mother’s face, who passed from this world younger and less smile-lined than I am today.  And although I know that Mother’s Day is a holiday that was most likely created by greeting card and chocolate companies, it is good to remember my intersection with the past and the future, my own place in the unfolding nature of years and days. My daughter who is now grown into an amazing young woman, once told me that she believes she must be from a long line of “scurry-ers”.  Because to have made it into being at all her ancestors had to have survived floods, droughts, plagues and negotiated political upheaval.  They had to have somehow survived wolves, bears, saber toothed tigers, childhood accidents and religious persecution.  In her imagination we were a people that said, “Hey ya’all, I’ll pass on heading out to bring down a wooly mastodon with pointy sticks, and hang here and find herbal cures and create poetry.”  And in some sense her take on it is correct, the fact that I am here today is probably because somewhere in my history were people who were in turns funny, creative and completely and inordinately lucky.  But in addition to such things, I believe am also at the intersection of an unfolding story of all the women who have faced the world and their own circumstances with fierce and tender love, faithfulness and courage.

And so I think of Mother’s Day as a time to be grateful for all the women that came before me, who were brave and smart and funny, who wiped noses and took care of the aging, who made art and survived tragedies and walked in suffragette, ERA and Women’s rights rallies, who got on boats for the new world with nothing but a sewing machine in a box—who did what needed to be done, because it needed to be done.   Mother’s Day is not just a holiday to celebrate those who are biological mothers or to promote some cultural idea of a soft and flowery kind of femininity.  Mother’s Day is for every woman who has ever cared enough to nurture herself and others.  It is to celebrate what has and continues to grow out of fierce and tender love, courage and vision for a world where wars are obsolete and no child is ever hungry.  Today is a day when I remember my own mom’s struggles and completely human mistakes and love her to the ends of the earth for the heart and courage it took to love life (and me) the way she did.

Let us take a moment today, and appreciate all the women who have loved tenderly and fiercely, to give thanks for the humor, creativity, raw courage and grace that has brought each one of us here.  Let us resolve to move forward with that same sense caring and faithfulness of purpose.  Let us bring into being a better kinder more connected world, a world that honors the light and essential worth in every single person.  Let us lean into justice, work for peace.  Let us honor and nurture the planet for the Great Mother it is to us all.  Let us carry forward the strength that has brought us here and the truest love that will lead us forward.

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Like Molly Brown

Here is a link to my song “Like Molly Brown” which is a celebration of women’s fierce and tender love courage and ongoing strength.