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For those of us dealing with infertility, this weekend of the year is one of the most difficult to get through. I tend to get angry at the world and find it generally best to just stay away from Facebook (and the internet in general) to escape all of the generic, commercialized, thoughtless Mother's Day posts and greetings.
And it's sad when still the infertility community itself is so fractured and contentious that we can't even come together for each other at this difficult time. I just left an infertility awareness "support" community today for good, because the community organizer took down someone's post because she DARED to talk about finding hope and good things about being infertile/childless. Excuse me? I'm supposed to live my entire life in misery and not appreciate/give thanks for the good things I do have - a beautiful home, a wonderful partner, general good health and great friendships around the world? And then it turned into a round of what I call the Infertility Olympics - who does or doesn't deserve a child because obviously if you haven't gone through 10 IVF cycles, multiple lost babies, and put yourself in bankruptcy taking fertility drugs for year, you don't "deserve" to be part of the community/ever beat IF.
And that's an attitude I just can't abide. Yet sadly it's far too common in the IF "support" world.
Anyway, back to the topic of Mother's Day (ugh). Which I will spend with my own mom, and I hope she just doesn't spend the entire time on my case about my own lack of children. But I think it's important that the ORIGINAL Mother's Day Proclamation by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe was an anti-war statement, after the devastation and losses to all families during the Civil War. As Consortium News observed, "Like most other holidays (including religious ones), Mother’s Day in capitalist America has been transformed into just another expectation of gift-buying and gift-giving.
What was originally a call to mobilize outraged mothers to keep their sons and husbands from going off half-cocked to kill and die for some corporate war profiteer or other, became just another opportunity to market non-essential consumer goods."
Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870:
"Arise then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!
"Say firmly: 'We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.'
"From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, 'Disarm, disarm!'
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor does violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar but of God.
"In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace."
And it's sad when still the infertility community itself is so fractured and contentious that we can't even come together for each other at this difficult time. I just left an infertility awareness "support" community today for good, because the community organizer took down someone's post because she DARED to talk about finding hope and good things about being infertile/childless. Excuse me? I'm supposed to live my entire life in misery and not appreciate/give thanks for the good things I do have - a beautiful home, a wonderful partner, general good health and great friendships around the world? And then it turned into a round of what I call the Infertility Olympics - who does or doesn't deserve a child because obviously if you haven't gone through 10 IVF cycles, multiple lost babies, and put yourself in bankruptcy taking fertility drugs for year, you don't "deserve" to be part of the community/ever beat IF.
And that's an attitude I just can't abide. Yet sadly it's far too common in the IF "support" world.
Anyway, back to the topic of Mother's Day (ugh). Which I will spend with my own mom, and I hope she just doesn't spend the entire time on my case about my own lack of children. But I think it's important that the ORIGINAL Mother's Day Proclamation by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe was an anti-war statement, after the devastation and losses to all families during the Civil War. As Consortium News observed, "Like most other holidays (including religious ones), Mother’s Day in capitalist America has been transformed into just another expectation of gift-buying and gift-giving.
What was originally a call to mobilize outraged mothers to keep their sons and husbands from going off half-cocked to kill and die for some corporate war profiteer or other, became just another opportunity to market non-essential consumer goods."
Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870:
"Arise then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!
"Say firmly: 'We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.'
"From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, 'Disarm, disarm!'
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor does violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar but of God.
"In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace."
