Today is Mother’s Day and a day unlike any I remember. Many mothers are separated from the children and grandchildren they love right now. After weeks of isolation and social distancing we may reflect on the great challenges of the last months and feel sorry for ourselves. We are having difficulty thinking about what comes next and will our lives evert return to “normal.” These were my thoughts as I began the day.
And then I began to think about the women who shaped my life—my mother and grandmothers. I began to think the immense challenges they experienced in their lives. My grandmothers both escaped unthinkable hardships in Russia in the early 1900s. One saw her parents killed, later to travel across Europe with a group of strangers, cross an ocean and start life in a new country. My mother and grandmothers encountered prejudices, world wars, and cold war and the Korean and Vietnam wars, the great depression. In a time when women had limited opportunity for work beyond the home, they created successful careers while raising a family and making sure their children would know better times.
But what I remember most is about the mothers in my life is their intense focus on others—family, friends, community, their recognition of their current challenge that was tempered by their optimism about the future, and their strength. They didn’t blame others. Rather they looked for solutions. If they felt self-pity it wasn’t evident.
On this “unusual” Mother’s Day, I am grateful to the great women who shaped my life, nurtured, encouraged and inspired me. They and many woman liked them created a new generation of women who are demonstrating selfless leadership and courage and who will make sure we get through this challenge with a new sense of purpose and direction.