{Site Creator’s note: this was shared at our Facebook page, and it got such an enormous response that I am sharing this here, exactly as it was passed on to me.}

Real Meaning of Mothers Day By:

~Kara L.C. Jones~

“… 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…”   ~Julia Ward Howe, Bosto…n, 1870

Mothers Day certainly stinks if your child is dead. In fact all holidays usually stink, but especially Mothers and Fathers Days which seem to be just made-up, hallmark-driven, commercial entities — those especially stink. I never had the energy to delve further than hallmark to learn about Mothers Day, never knew where it came from, nor why it is still celebrated with no sense of the tradition being mentioned.
Well, this year, to my surprise, I got a history lesson. A group of women on our small island decided that they didn’t want to celebrate and contribute to the capitalistic hallmark economy this year. They wanted to protest against violence. They wanted to express their maternal feelings for ALL children of any race, nationality, religion, gender, alive or dead. And they wanted to honor the power of that expression. So here in our little piece (peace) of earth, there was a parade, a small festival-atmosphere gathering at Ober Park lawn and playground. And they were spreading the ORIGINAL MEANING OF MOTHERS DAY AS JULIA WARD HOWE WROTE ABOUT IT AND ORIGINALLY VISIONED IT!!!!!!

What???? When they told me about this endeavor, I was so intrigued that Mothers Day had a real and meaningful history. I still was not able to bring myself to march with them and celebrate with all their beautiful, living children playing while I was smarting at the heart, grieving my dead son and my motherhood lost. BUT I had a much greater appreciation for Mothers Day, for history, for taking a stand against violence and war to save the world’s children. And here’s why:
In 1870, Julia Ward Howe wrote and published a protest against the carnage and violence of the Civil War — this was a protest led by WOMEN WHO HAD LOST THEIR SONS!!!!! It was bereaved mothers who started this!!!! Hallmark is WAY OFF the mark with the way this holiday is commercialized and propagated now, BUT in the beginning, this was a day of protest, an expression of horrified grief from bereaved mothers who were parted from their sons!! Wow. Okay. That’s a different spin.

So what did Julia have to say back in 1870? You read and see for yourself:   Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!
Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall 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 women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the 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 plow 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 then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at 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.
Julia Ward Howe   Boston 1870

HELLO!!!!???????? Mothers Day came as an answer to Julia’s proclamation. It started as a ceremony of bereavement and then as a movement for peace and action to stop the senseless deaths of children everywhere. Our society can commercialize all they want. Because in my heart of hearts I know the real meaning of this day came from pain, loss, and grief — the same things I feel on any given Mothers Day. And from now on, when people urge me to celebrate the day, I will tell them this:

 “I’ll celebrate with you as long as you will first mourn with me. It is the combination of the two that lends itself to the true meaning of Mothers Day!”

{And a THANK YOU Marybeth Pavese O’Donnell for sharing this at stillbirthday!}

written in honor of Bereaved Mother’s Day – May 6

She would be six years old.

Her mother would be waking early in the morning, to pack her a lunch and place her items carefully in a brown paper bag, folding the top over, and placing a heart sticker on the outside of the bag.

Her mother would tuck the brown paper sack into the pink, glittery back pack.

Her mother would help her pick out blue jeans with a pretty multi-colored butterfly pattern along the seam, and a purple shirt to match.

This mother would brush her daughter’s dark brown hair and tie it in pigtails with bright green hair ties.

She would see her daughter off to school, kissing her forehead and telling her that she loves her.

After school, the little girl would come bounding up the front steps, pigtails bouncing, holding a small plastic cup with a small, budding flower in it, just for her mother, with a heart scribbled in red on the outside of the cup.

“Happy Mother’s Day!” she’d say, as her mother would open the screen door, scoop up her daughter, and hug her in thankfulness.

That night, this mother would run her daughter a bubble bath, wash her hair with strawberry shampoo, and lay out Snow White panties and Cinderella pajamas.

The mother would brush her daughter’s dark, soft hair and the two of them would giggle together over something only mothers and little girls giggle about.

After the mother finished reading her a Bible story, turned on the princess night light, and tucked her into bed, she would go to the kitchen sink to finish washing the dishes, where the new flower, sitting on the window ledge above the kitchen sink, would cause her to stop and smile.

The very first Mother’s Day gift her daughter ever brought home from school.

Instead, she goes grocery shopping, and places the bags in the back seat of her car, where a booster seat with purple flowers on it and cookie crumblies crunched into it should be.

Instead, the refridgerator door is bare and shiny where sheets of beautiful scribbly artwork should be.

Instead, three feet above the floor level, the walls are all perfectly clean, where tiny smudgy fingerprints should be.

Instead of joining MOPS, she joins a support group.

Instead of calling her daughter’s Brownie leader, she emails her bereavement mentee.

Instead of going through her daughter’s bookbag to find a worksheet with a shiny gold star, and carefully placing the worksheet in a scrapbook for her daughter to treasure and to pass down to her own children someday, she opens her tiny shoebox sized container of items saved from the day her beautiful daughter was born…the day her beautiful daughter died.

Instead of dreaming of passing down her wedding dress to her daughter, she opens the tiny ziploc bag that holds her daughter’s first blanket, and quickly, she breaths deeply, trying to capture and remember every last detail of her daughter, before tightly shutting the bag again.

Instead of teaching her daughter how to write her name, she reads her daughter’s obituary.

Instead of her daughter bringing her flowers from school…

the mother….brings flowers….to her daughter.

While she wouldn’t have quite been six yet, this article is inspired by Mary Beth and her mother, Bambi. Bambi is a stillbirthday mentor and gave permission to use this photo to contribute to honoring all loss moms who’ve been walking this path of life after loss for years.
For those mothers who’ve endured bereavement for years, stillbirthday honors you.

This is my first Christmas after my miscarried baby was born.  These are my (somewhat scattered) thoughts:

I reflect on the way I was treated.  The way the doctor grabbed me by my shoulders, and told me that “we need to get that dead tissue out of there” (and calling him “debris”) and the way that I was told that if I miscarry naturally at home, to just expect a menstrual period.  I recall the feeling of holding my tiny baby in the palm of my hand, knowing full well that I could haphazardly toss him in front of my dog, and let her lap him up in one big smack, and that nobody, no medical, no legal representative, nobody would even care.  I remember how worthless my son was to the people who were supposed to give me prenatal care, and the anger wells in my throat, and the cinderblock wall of defense rises in my heart as untapped rage festers behind it.

I reflect on what I felt.  The reality that I was the mother of a baby who the world would not see grow, a baby I would not sing to, a baby I would not nurse, a baby I would not hear giggle or see grab my fingers, this reality was…so thoroughly crushing, I found it hard to breathe, and I find that difficulty return as I remember.  The absolute defeat, the magnitude of hopelessness, was so profound that there simply isn’t a word to describe its power over my heart.  I was shattered, broken, empty of hope and joy and full of pity, despair, and rage.  I attempted to channel these things inwardly, and the claustrophobic level of guilt was literally disabling.  I was broken.

These intense feelings were capped not by my might.  I am too weak to control it.  It is purely the work and the grace of God that has disciplined these feelings and guided them to something much more productive.

I reflect on the way Mary was treated.  Despite the shortsighted romanticism I see protrayed by some Christians, the birth of Jesus isn’t something we should really want to duplicate (by birthing “unassisted” simply because a person thinks that this story must mean that God wants us to, for example).  Mary’s fiance almost left her, the fact that she walked for such a long distance so late in her pregnancy, the government wanted baby Jesus dead, these things all provoke empathy and compassion.

I do not resent the birth of Christ, because my baby died.

The birth of Christ also emits hope.  His birth was orchestrated to fulfill a bigger plan.  Every moment of His life was carefully weighed to reflect the biggest version of God.

His death coincided with events prophesied before His birth.  He knew He was going to die, in order to fulfill the scriptures, and yet those who were strongest in conviction of Who He was felt their faith shaken and crumble as He carried His cross in Golgotha.

I believe both Jesus Christ and my son fulfilled God’s purposes through their lives and through their untimely deaths.

My miscarried baby was a gift, as all babies are.

Jesus was a gift to the world, one that even His own people didn’t understand.  My baby’s life has forced me to see that God values each and every one of us, that we all have a divine calling, and that events that may seem shrouded in earthly happenstance often have much more significance.

Jesus’ birth was only the beginning.  His whole life was leading up to His imminent and certain death.  The death that would allow all of us, each of us, direct and personal access to God, without intermediators or boundaries.  This man who knew His life was ending, did not waste a moment of His life but always radiated God’s magnificence.  Not a moment was wasted, and we are all blessed by this humble and graceful demonstration.  This man who knew He would die, but lived anyway, now holds my baby in His arms.  My baby, who also lived.  My baby, whose greatest purpose and divine calling could only be fulfilled through his untimely death.  This purpose, this revelation, has me seeing Jesus more intimately, more completely, than I ever have before.

It is not a waste that my baby died.  I would not undo his creation just to undo my hurt.

It is through my hurt that I can see the reality of peace that lay ahead in a way I simply was unable to before.  I value his life and respect God’s decision regarding his death as being much more significant than I ever understood on any given day that I was still pregnant with him.

Jesus’ birth doesn’t mean anything less because He was fated to die.

His death and subsequent resurrection brought with it the promise of a joy, love, healing and peace that we have never known.  His death and subsequent resurrection offered healing, hope, forgiveness and restoration.  Our own deaths lost their permenance and therefore lost the power of fear over us.

Humanity needed His death, and yet His life wasn’t any less valuable for it.

And, I believe, on a much smaller scale, the same is true for my baby.

To anyone who knew the threat to Jesus’ life when He was a baby, baby Jesus arrived in the middle of the storm.  In the middle of my own storm, Jesus comes.  He comes to remind me that the worst is almost over- suffering, sadness, mourning, brokenness, are all coming to an end.

A world of magnificence beyond comprehension is still gestating.  He promises, and He consoles me.  Just wait.  Be still.

His birth was just the beginning.