May 8, 2022

Celebrating Mother's Day




Our American holiday known as Mother's Day is credited to Ana Jarvis, from Philadelphia, who never married and never had children.

But Anna Jarvis still had a fierce devotion to her own mother. She began a national campaign to establish a national Mother's Day, beginning first in her own church, and then moving outward into others.

She was inspired by her own mother saying "that it would be nice if someone created a memorial to mothers".




Three years after her mother died in 1905, she organized the first official Mother's Day service at a church where her mother had spent more than 20 years teaching Sunday school.

By 1911 Mother's Day was celebrated in almost every state. And in 1914,  President Woodrow Wilson made the official announcement proclaiming Mother's Day as a national holiday that was to be held each year on the 2nd Sunday of May.

Today, over 100 years later, the former Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church is considered the official shrine to mothers around the world.

So, today as the shrine celebrates this anniversary, each mother will be given a white carnation...Jarvis's pick of the 'official' Mother's Day flower...her mother's favorite.

What is most interesting, is that while Anna Jarvis was passionately devoted to the idea of celebrating an official Mother's Day, she was also just as passionately against its commercialization!!




She detested store bought cards and believed that gifts should be individualized. She felt the era of the 'true' mother was rapidly disappearing and was adamant about the day as a celebration of the 19th century ideal.

She became well known for scathing letters in which she not only berated those who bought their cards but for whom the holiday simply had become an opportunity to sell cards, candy and flowers.

Before she died in 1948, she actually protested a Mother's Day celebration in New York and was arrested for disturbing the peace.

Like her own mother, Ann (a celebrated community activist) Anna Jarvis believed in her ideals and was willing to fight for them to the end!










💜Love you and miss you sweet mama 💜

Nell Grace Peltier Savikko
Sept.1, 1925
St.Martinville, Louisiana
Sept.8, 2013
Douglas Island,  Alaska





We celebrated my Mother's Day 2019 with wine and chocolate and beautiful fresh garden flowers and lots and lots of lovely plant starts and seeds to grow more flowers next year and many more years to come and a darling handmade and little hand printed stepping stone!
Picked, harvested, created or thoughtfully bought with love!

The next year I made sure each family celebrated their own person Mother's Day with their own little families and not necessary to celebrate me as a mother or Larry as a father. They are all working full time as mothers and fathers with parenting and pet raising. I truly want their days to be their choices of being, doing, and celebrating. That makes me so happy for them. 




So Mothers Dat is now  their day for each family's fun and of course Sunday doings and each family's own Mother's Day in all the forms that comes !

We can be mothers and grandmothers, aunties and foster moms, we can be mothers to beloved pets, friends' children who've lost their mom,  we can remember our own mothers and grandmothers and aunties.

But most of all we can take good care of ourselves and love and nurture our hearts and our spirits in all ways.




Happy Mother's Day Love to Mother's Everywhere






Links for creating lovely gifts ideas for Mother's Day:





With Heart and Hands: Links: 2,500 3500 4500 over 5000 Free Quilt Patterns!



Making Fidget Quilts, Aprons, Pillows, Bags for Alzheimer's Patients: 


Free Redwork and Embroidery Patterns


  


 

Making a Quillow

How to Make a Quillow 

...and fold it back into a pillow!



moms pink ribbon blanket.JPG


Celebrate Mother's in All Ways on Any Day!






Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands as she shares her imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting... from my heart and with my hands.




Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands as she shares her imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, from my heart and with my hands

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