“Mother’s Day IS about Love.
But it’s not about commercial, comfortable love that snuggles up and stays home—it’s about love that throws open the door and marches out of our homes, beyond our fences and neighborhoods and into the hurting world to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, comfort the hurting, mother the motherless.
Mother’s Day love is dangerous, revolutionary love that unites our one human family and reminds us that we belong to each other and that there is no such thing as other people’s children.” The Compassion Collective
These words remind me of my mother.
She is one of those mothers who does not know the comfort of having because her possessions are never hers when someone else is still in need.
When we grew up such mothers were always around us, the ones who didn’t know how to freeze bread because there was always a hungry child. I know they are many such mothers.
The mothers whose houses were always full of children.
They had no knowledge of such things we call “me time”,
Their time belonged to us and other children; the children from the neighbourhood, the children from both distant and near relatives. These moms knew what it is to open their hearts and houses for others.
They knew how to beat mischief out of every boy and girl in the street and simply because they understood that it takes the whole village to raise a child.
They would scold you if you were up to no good because they understood that you are a child and you needed direction. They lived on very little but they understood that every little thing could change a life. Sometimes all they would offer was a prayer but even that was enough to warm the soul of a needy child.
These mothers wanted every child to become something, it was never about the child they bore, it was about all the other children.
If she couldn’t take the entire house to private school then we were all doomed.
These mother didn’t build empires, they didn’t become #girl boss or boss lady. They were more hungry for the success of others than their own success. Some of them never became medical doctors and never became the things they dreamt of, some had angelic voices that could have taken them to Broadway.
It is not that they were not capable or any less than many of us but they choose to give up on their dreams so many of us can become something. They sacrificed for their children even the ones they had no relations with because they knew the Compassion Collective truth;
that there is no such thing as other people’s children.
All children were theirs.
The broken child, the hungry child, the ill mannered child, the well mannered child, they embraced them all.
They knew the pain of giving up dreams to make way for someone else dreams , they knew the joy of shining light into someone’s path. ie
They lived the very essence of the Compassion Collective ideals that are not always easy to uphold . They did not live that way because it was easy.
They lived that way because the only way to live was to love.
The life of such mothers is captured in the words of Marjorie Pay Hinckley that Mothers are endowed with a love that is unlike any other love on the face of the earth.
Love like theirs is warming love.
It reaches one in their coldest winters and warms the heart.
So when I read these words from the Compassion Collective shared by Marie Forleo about the work they are doing to take care of refugees, I knew that my mother and many mothers I grew up witnessing, know this truth that there is no such thing as other people’s children.
Your turn
May you be reminded this Mother’s day of this truth; that there is no such thing as other people’s children and that there is no such thing as nobody’s child.
May you throw open your doors, match out of your home, all for the ones who hurt, for the ones in need, for the ones who have been abandoned.
I am not asking you to leave your job or give up on your dreams, I am asking you to start where you are, with what you have.
I am asking you to reach out to other children, to support education, to build dreams, to give a little of yourself to someone.
Because if we love the “mother’s way” in some way we will heal the world, we will make it a better place, the same way the mothers who knew that there is no such thing as other people’s children did. They were not armed with much but with love.