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TODAY IS ONE YEAR . . .
since my mother-in-law, Bonnie, departed her physical body. It feels surreal to have completed a full revolution around the sun. I am still unpacking the pain of having all of the miracles of modern medicine at our disposable, and still watching her spirit separate from her body. It's an evolution we will all inevitably experience . . . and yet it felt premature, unnecessary, and particularly harsh to watch someone who took such pride in feeding everyone around her find comfort only in abstaining from any food, as her body repeatedly rejected it.
And yet we had warm bedding, running water, a mountain of prescription pain killers, and each other. We had access to food, and school, and flexibility in our jobs.
This week - which kicked off with 'Mother's Day' - I can't help but think of all of the grief untended in this world. The people that are not afforded the time or space or means to grieve - whether that stems from the loss of rituals, the economic realities of late-stage capitalism, the brutality of police violence, or the compounding trauma of an ongoing genocide.
On Sunday, I learned that the origins of Mother's Day were rooted in the community work of Ann Jarvis. Ann birthed more than a dozen children in what most people now call West Virginia. After losing most of them to common causes of death in the mid-1800's - such as diphtheria or measles - she started organizing 'Mother's Work Days' to do communal public work, imparting knowledge of hygiene to prevent the types of diseases that plagued her children and brought her suffering.
When the Civil War broke out, Ann's geographic location gave her keen insight to the carnage all around, and in 1868 she organized a 'Mother's Friendship Day,' which was, in essence, a protest - one in which mothers came together to proclaim their refusal to raise children solely for the purpose of them killing other mothers' children.
It's no surprise that capitalism and culture have co-opted the original intentions behind Mother's Day. Yet we have the opportunity to uplift the original spirit of Ann Jarvis' work - one rooted in coming together to build webs of support in favor of progress, community, and care.
This year seems ripe to remind ourselves that the conveniences of the Western world are born directly from the systems that are causing death, destruction, displacement, disease, and starvation in Gaza. As Ann Jarvis might put it, our duty as Mothers is not only to our own kin, but in mutual support for a world that spares the suffering of others.
Such suffering is not only about death and the accompanying anguish of grief, or the fatigue, mental anguish, and physical pain of being starved to death . . . it is also about the lack of dignity resulting from the destruction of waste water systems, hospitals, housing, and distribution centers.
This past week I had a particularly wicked case of poison ivy rash. Over the course of a few days, the blisters bubbled and weeped, and by Friday night, I was experiencing a pain well beyond an itchy discomfort. I knew that the open wounds had led to an infection, and made my way to urgent care where they prescribed steroids to soothe the rash and antibiotics to mitigate the infection. I felt almost immediate relief and am well on my way to completely healing. I am grateful for the access that I have - despite the expenses that went along with it - and know that everyone deserves such care.
As health care workers in Gaza relay, a majority of the emergency room visits are not from the daily falling of bombs - they result from women with preventable infections due to lack of sanitary products. The combined lack of access to safe, clean water means they are forced to use clothing to soak up their menstrual blood, and that clothing is often contaminated by the water it was washed in.
Gaza is not alone in her suffering, and neither are we. Tending to my grief in losing Bonnie's body - and cultivating a relationship with her in the evolving form of her spirit - has given me the opportunity to recognize how critical it is that we do not look away from the suffering embedded in capitalist systems. Many of us fear that if open our hearts to such pain, we will simply succumb to it. We think that if we acknowledge the shortfalls of the status quo, we will lose the conveniences and privileges that some of us are afforded. But the exhaustion comes when we do not let ourselves complete the cycle: nature works in cycles, and the distractions, the denial . . . they do not take away the pain . . . they only build the pressure until balance can be restored, until the cycle can complete itself.
When we take a page out of Ann Jarvis' book, we learn that we have the ability to transmute pain and suffering into something far more beautiful, far more powerful. By her definition, we are all Mothers, all human, all alive in this world. With the decay and composting of the current systems, we can birth a more wholly beautiful and bountiful reality, buoyed by each other. We can all use that magnetic power to come together and amplify our voices. We can work with the cycle, rather than working against it.
There are 80,000 of us here on this newsletter (lest you thought you were alone), and we are with you as you work to continually strengthen this muscle through your daily actions. May you understand that there are at least 1,000 opportunities each and every day where you can use your voice, your wisdom, and your actions to turn the tide. The world needs you. We need you, to build a better world alongside you.
To re-birth,
Tay + Dor
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