By Dontrey Britt-Hart

Welcome to May, my friends. It’s the season of slightly warmer weather, budding flowers and trees, college decision days, graduations and Memorial Day (the unofficial start of summer). Wait. I believe I missed something. Ah, yes, Mother’s Day. Doesn’t it just slide up on you sometimes, almost unannounced? Well, it’s here. In days. Four more, to be exact.

And while it is a celebratory time for women who, as Maya Angelou so poetically described, spend their days looking after their children and anybody else who needs to be looked after, it can also be a bittersweet occasion. Tough for those who never bore a child, for those who lost a child, for those whose mothers are no longer on this side of heaven, and for those with special, complicated mother-child relationships. For these individuals, Mother’s Day is one they wish would come and go as quickly as spring.

But I come today to offer a renewed perspective with the hope that we can all find the beauty in this weekend of maternal merriment.

 First, let’s reconsider what the word mother truly means. Yes, it is without a doubt the woman who gave you life. As a mom of three who is also a daughter to a mom who bore three, I would not dilute the significance of carrying a child. But I would never diminish the truth that women become mothers in many ways – through nurturing, guidance, upliftment, education and affection. It is in the looking after and the sacrificing and the loving that true motherhood is born. So, I would dare say if there is a woman in your life – genetically connected or not – who has offered these gifts to you, then she has been a mother to you. And if you have shaped the life of a child with your time and thoughtfulness and care, you have mothered. Mother is both a noun and a verb, and it is the latter that is the true hallmark of motherhood.

 We all have the capacity to give and receive love, to be of service to others, and to consider someone’s feelings over and beyond our own. And when we do this, we are living out the true meaning of the holiday. 

 This year, I ask you to lift a glass and wave a hand of praise for the woman and every woman who has ‘brought their whole selves to you,’ for they are your mothers.

 May there be much happiness on your Mother’s Day.

Hugs,

Dontrey