Take a moment to contemplate the real origins of Mother’s Day: the belief that women can create peace and justice through nonviolent love and community rooted in humanity rather than in geographical gangs.
The movement to set aside a day for women’s peacemaking began with two women: Anna Jarvis and Julia Ward Howe. Jarvis, a West Virginia mother of 11, worked to improve rural sanitation and healthcare before and during the Civil War. When the war ended, she worked to reconcile Union and Confederate families in her state.
Julia Ward Howe, the author of Battle Hymn of the Republic, witnessed the atrocities committed by both sides during the Civil War. Howe was appalled, not only by the fatal casualties of violence, but by the other effects of war: economic devastation in both the North and the South, disease, and physical and mental disability. She devoted herself to building an international community of women creating peaceful resolution to conflicts.
