The Hand That Rocks The Cradle Rules The World

Anna Jarvis started the Mother’s Day movement over 100 years ago to honor her Mother who was a remarkable woman who started Mother’s Day Work Clubs in order for women to care for their kids.  She carried the idea even further by having mothers meet with soldiers after the Civil War to mend the hatred still seething between Rebs and Yankees.  An amazing woman, and her daughter sought to get their home state of West Virginia to recognize Mother’s Day as a formal holiday.  Eventually, in 1914 she even got it signed into law as a nationally recognized holiday.  Sadly, she became so disillusioned with the eventual commercialism of the day that she spent most of her own fortune attempting to get the holiday she worked to make a reality abolished.

Here we are, today, 100 years after Woodrow Wilson signed it into law as a recognition of the unselfish giving of themselves that mothers offer.  Not a day goes by that I don’t think of all the things my mom did for me, things I didn’t appreciate enough to understand until I had my own children.  It is a challenging job and one that under siege these days as something that can be farmed out to others to do.  But no one can influence a child like mom can in transmitting values that will stand the test of a lifetime of challenges.

Hopefully, today you will have the opportunity to tell your mother just how much you appreciate all she has done for you.  I still thank my mother every year, even though she is no longer with us here on earth, and I know she appreciates it…yours will, too!