As the ancient Greek philosopher Plato said “give me a different set of mothers and I will give you a different world” – for us in the black community it is mothers who provide the backbone of that community and we need to, on Mother’s Day, celebrate our mothers with gratitude and appreciation, for gratitude and appreciation is the mother’s strength of resilience determination and in many instances sacrifices that have brought the black community and black advancement to a large extent to where we are today.
It is navigating the complex and in today’s difficult world that we’ve come to appreciate the work of mothers as they try to shape, guide, protect and even nurture the growing person, quite literally raising a child into a person of consequence, to understand and to take his or her rightful place in the world; raising a child today is no picnic – we find that most black mothers are doing at a minimum two jobs, one at work and one back at home, and in many instances more than two jobs, and so they’re juggling the role of a breadwinner with the role of a nurturer and undertaking in that role one of the biggest responsibilities any human being can take on; so as we celebrate Mother’s Day we must come to the understanding that almost every day we should be thankful for mothers who have raised us, loved us, encouraged us through many a difficult situation and produced us as performing human beings; without a mother’s love each of us would be a lesser person so we must take the time to thank her and to let her know how much we appreciate her, her love, her sacrifice and her support, and if your mom is no longer with us still pay tribute to her and find some way to pay tribute to a mom or to someone who treated you as a mother or to some mother, that you admire her and what she’s doing in the life of some child or children; it can simply be an act of kindness, making a contribution also to a community activity, community activity networks in the best interests of the community and for those mothers that are with us, they will tell you that a child literally changes their way of life.
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Becoming a parent is a life altering experience and it requires all the effort and all the attention that is needed to work in the best interest of that child; it’s impossible to pay back mothers fully for all that they have done for us but we can show love and appreciation as we celebrate mothers. For mothers in the black community we all can work to make black maternal health crisis a priority; black women disproportionately carry the burden of maternal mortality which is oftentimes three to four times greater than that of white mothers. This is a significant problem in our society and in the United States and it is a problem that we all should be working on to rid the system of the racism and inequality that has plagued black women and indeed black mothers. The role of mothers in this society is growing more and more important as society looks for ways that will guide us through some complex and troubling times and we need to have the strength of a mother to guide our thinking and our commitment and our direction.
We need to particularly celebrate mothers and look to them more and more with their steadfastness and resilience as we face the many issues of today’s world, but let us take the time out to wish mothers and not just only wish them but show the appreciation in a substantive way to
Mothers on this Mother’s Day by some form or fashion even if it’s just giving her flowers.
Happy Mother’s Day!
