Mother’s Day Reflections and Complexity in Unyielding Love
I graduated college 20 years ago - well shoot!
As an Orangeman, our graduation festivities took place in “The Dome” and it was a packed stadium.
I was also hungover and really didn’t want to be there, but my mother really wanted us to go, and it was Mother’s Day, so I did not get my way.
The thing you didn’t want to do often becomes the things you are glad you did. Our graduation speaker, the eloquent and regal Phelicia Rashad delivered a succinct and powerful address.
“What could I say to this August body that’s meaningful, and personal and true? I want to offer this suggestion to you: The best way to live in this world is with a mother’s heart.“
Many of us have a complicated relationship with Mother’s Day. Many have fractured relationships with their birth parents. Many of us have experienced the loss of our mother. Many have had other women (and men) fill the role of mother in their lives. Many have had to learn to be mother to themselves or to others before their time. We honor your challenges, your pain, and your strength.
For those of you who are mothers, or who have taken on the most important responsibility of motherhood, thank you for the love you share.
Clearly, since I’m bringing this speech 20 years later (he said it again!!) something in her speech must have resonated deeply with me.
There is something so archetypal, so primal about what Ms. Rashad says. Love doesn’t always feel like a warm hug. It is unimaginably faceted, filled with wounds, and sustaining it in action is never easy.
We’ve woven that painful love into our deepest stories - the divine feminine has done some pretty difficult things to protect those in her charge. Parvati became Durga who became Kali to destroy the threatening demon, Mary fled the country to protect her son, Pachamama saves her children after the Great Flood. These Goddesses are not strangers to hardship.
Even more primal - Mother animals will often fight to protect their young, even to their own death. It’s written into the very code of life. It’s in the DNA of motherhood.
Resourceful mothers everywhere, sometimes the only parent in the household, all too often take the primary responsibility of parenting their children while managing their own responsibilities, jobs, and stresses. Many of these women work to exhaustion, struggling simply to put food on the table. They put their own happiness and health aside to keep their children provided for.
Often they do this completely without gratitude or acknowledgement, except perhaps once a year.
I am of course a huge proponent of self-care. And I think most of the time mothers in particular need and deserve far more of it. But the invitation is to open ourselves to that divine, pure, mother energy to everyone, as our world is in dire need of it.
We need it even with, or in spite of, or even because of our diverse and individualized personalities. Our entire human family needs to be unyieldingly embraced as a whole with love and respect. And caring for one another, and Mother Earth who truly sustains all of us, is self-care of the highest order.
“My great wish for all of you is that you would understand that this takes great effort and sustained and renewed commitment, that you would each come to regard this world and all of its inhabitants as your family and that you would embrace it with a mother’s heart.”
PS. My mother said she’d be mad if I didn’t write something nice about her. You’re awesome mom.
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"CONGRATULATIONS"
ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PHYLICIA RASHAD AT
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY'S COMMENCEMENT, 2004
Congratulations and Happy Mother’s Day.
Time is precious and short so I'll get right to the point. You asked me to come, so I'm
here. And I asked myself, "What could I say to this August body that’s meaningful,
and personal and true?” I want to offer this suggestion to you: The best way to live
in this world is with a mother’s heart. Yes.
A mother’s heart is brave. A mother’s heart is keenly intelligent. A mother’s heart is
resourceful and quick and skilled in action. A mother’s heart is flexible. A mother’s
heart is sustained and empowered by the purity of its intention—its soul
intention—to see the family through. Yes. And to encourage each member of the
family with its diverse, individual personalities. To embrace the family as a whole
with love and respect. Unyielding in this effort, the mother’s heart sacrifices its own
pleasure for the well-being of the family.
My great wish for all of you is that you would understand that this takes great effort
and sustained and renewed commitment, that you would each come to regard this
world and all of its inhabitants as your family and that you would embrace it with a
mother’s heart.
May all of your days be filled with brilliant sunrises and magnificent sunsets, and
may you take the time to regard them. And just like the mother’s heart, may you live
in constant remembrance and gratitude for the one who created you. And may good
fortune always attend you in all of your endeavors—and tonight may you throw
down and celebrate, celebrate, celebrate!
The world that you want to live in needs you to create it. The world that you want to
live in needs you to create it. So live in it, and create it with a mother’s heart.
Congratulations.
