Thank you, mothers!

So, we celebrate Mother’s Day every year at the second Sunday of May. I have a bias for Mother’s Day of course since I am a mother myself. I am also a daughter of a mom who gives me roots and who gives me wings. Am I ready for Mother’s Day? This year as I am searching for ideas to honor my mother, I came across the history of this national day.

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When Anna Jarvis campaigned to make the second Sunday of May a national holiday in the United States in 1914, she intended to honor her mother, Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis. Today Mother’s Day is internationally recognized though the date may differ in different countries. The term is mostly used in singular form because Anna Jarvis’ passion was for people to remember and appreciate their own mothers “who has done more for you than anyone in the world”.

Born to a Methodist minister, Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis was a Sunday School teacher in Andrew’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia. In 1858, she organized Mothers’ Day Work Clubs in 5 towns of West Virginia to improve health and sanitary conditions. These clubs raised money to buy medicine and to hire women to work in families where the mother suffered from tuberculosis. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis urged her Mothers’ Day Work Clubs to declare neutrality and to provide aid and nursing care to both Confederate and Union soldiers especially at the time of a typhoid outbreak. In 1868, she created a committee to establish a “Mother’s Friendship Day”, the purpose of which was “to reunite families that had been divided during the Civil War.” Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis wanted to expand the “Mother’s Friendship Day” into an annual memorial for mothers, but she died in 1905 before the celebration became popular. After her death on May 12, 1907, her daughter, Anna Jarvis, passed out 500 white carnations at her mother’s church—one for each mother in the congregation. The following year, she held a memorial to her mother in Grafton, West Virginia on May 10, 1908, and then embarked upon a campaign to make Mother’s Day a recognized holiday, a goal which was achieved when President Woodrow Wilson declared it so in 1914.

My mother, in her own way, has given most of her life to her children, the family and to others. To think of what she has done warms my heart. In gratitude, what is better than giving her my time? Time to be with her and to listen to her. Time to cook for her and time to make something for her. Time to plan out the way to express my gratitude and affection for her.

My creative friends have unlimited ideas: scrapbook, newsletter, handmade card, home-print menu, mom’s home cooking cookbook….. With a good color printer, you can download printable projects from https://www.pinterest.com/inkjetstarinc/printable-diy-for-special-occasions/. Add your thoughts, love and affection, you can make it your own.