This Mother’s Day…a Dedication

For my children, and for all children everywhere

Today is dedicated to all the mothers reading this in cyberspace. Mothers who are away from their children by choice, unable to be with their children due to circumstances beyond their control, or are surrounded peacefully by their children.

Today I dedicate this to mothers who have lost their children to death, while being carried in their wombs or in their arms. Mothers who have lost their children to an unjust justice system, given into foster care or adopted out of their arms, put into cages and shipped away to strangers. Mothers who have lost their children to kidnapping by strangers or by the government, hours or days or years ago, but who are holding on to the slender hope of seeing their child again some day. Mothers who have lost their children to partners with greater power, greater financial means, or those who have absconded with their children out of reach.

Today is dedicated to all the women who did not wish to be the mothers they were forced to become from family sexual assault, stranger rape, illegal underage marriages in cultures and countries around the globe, including in this nation of freedom and liberty for all. This is dedicated to all the mothers who long for children of their own and are unable to have them.

Today is dedicated to all the women who choose not be biological mothers but who mother other women’s children with steadfastness and compassion. This is for all the mothers who made unpopular choices, who made mistakes, who made decisions not to other people’s liking but kept on the unsteady path of motherhood nevertheless.

Within the circles of recovery and healing that I move in, many of these women co-exist, often within the same person. The celebration of many holidays can be triggers for those who have suffered through or endured what happens when human relationships are distorted. This is dedicated to the women for whom no Hallmark celebrations are without pain or the memory of suffering. This is for all the women who have learned to mother themselves as adults when no one nurtured or mothered them as children.

I dedicate today to all the children now adults who survived their mothers.