Now, here's a tragic but true story. A lot of these kinds of women; be it the mother's day inventor or the pink ribbon inventor for breast cancer, despised the commercialization of what they believed in so much.
Love for a mother can never be repaid through a few flowers & chocolates or cards. If this would've been true, then nursing homes wouldn't be filled with old moms crying that their kids put them there (many by coercion) & have forgotten them completely.
Last week or so, I put a blog post here how there are inheritance wars are going on in Canada & US. The article showed how kids (Baby Boomers) despise their parents to be still alive & not sharing their wealth with them. It's not the story of one or a few families, but many families. Those Baby Boomers also showered their moms with chocolates & flowers on Mother's Day, because that's easy to do. The harder part is taking care of an old, fragile, a shell of a woman. But that's tough to do, so let's ship mom off to nursing home & divide up the bounties of her wealth.
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If you think the spirit of Mother’s Day has been spoiled by the commercialism of cards, flowers & once-a-year sincerity, you stand united with the woman credited with giving us the annual event.
West Virginian Anna Jarvis was so horrified by the monster she helped create in 1914, she spent most of her later years campaigning to have the second Sunday in May removed from the calendar as the day to honour your mother.
In the end, Jarvis lost the fight. The woman, who was never a mother herself, exhausted her financial resources & ruined her mental health, dying alone in 1948 in an asylum at the age of 84.
“She simply wanted a day to honour & remember mothers, but in her mind it didn’t turn out that way,” says William Pollard, an archivist at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va., where Jarvis bequeathed her letters & other writings.
In 1914, Jarvis spearheaded a campaign to help persuade US president Woodrow Wilson to set aside May’s second Sunday as a national day for recognition. She orchestrated a letter-writing campaign to Wilson, lobbied influential politicians & clergymen & distributed brochures arguing about the importance of a national day for mothers.
Jarvis’ cause came from admiration for her recently deceased mother, Anna Maria & others like her, who had been an inspiration.
But by the early 1920s, she was sickened by the commercial circus she had helped create. She felt the day had nothing to do with celebrating the real achievements of women.
Jarvis spent her days crashing floral company conventions to protest & urging card companies to give the money they made from Mother’s Day to the poor. At one Mother’s Day convention where flowers were being sold she was arrested for disturbing the peace. She even launched a lawsuit to stop a Mother’s day festival from being held.
Her story didn’t end happily. Jarvis, who didn’t marry, died in 1948 alone & penniless in a hospital near Philadelphia from a illness brought on in part by her ceaseless campaign.
Just before her death Jarvis told a local reporter: “I devoted my entire life to Mother’s Day & the racketeers & grafters have taken it over.”
Love for a mother can never be repaid through a few flowers & chocolates or cards. If this would've been true, then nursing homes wouldn't be filled with old moms crying that their kids put them there (many by coercion) & have forgotten them completely.
Last week or so, I put a blog post here how there are inheritance wars are going on in Canada & US. The article showed how kids (Baby Boomers) despise their parents to be still alive & not sharing their wealth with them. It's not the story of one or a few families, but many families. Those Baby Boomers also showered their moms with chocolates & flowers on Mother's Day, because that's easy to do. The harder part is taking care of an old, fragile, a shell of a woman. But that's tough to do, so let's ship mom off to nursing home & divide up the bounties of her wealth.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you think the spirit of Mother’s Day has been spoiled by the commercialism of cards, flowers & once-a-year sincerity, you stand united with the woman credited with giving us the annual event.
West Virginian Anna Jarvis was so horrified by the monster she helped create in 1914, she spent most of her later years campaigning to have the second Sunday in May removed from the calendar as the day to honour your mother.
In the end, Jarvis lost the fight. The woman, who was never a mother herself, exhausted her financial resources & ruined her mental health, dying alone in 1948 in an asylum at the age of 84.
“She simply wanted a day to honour & remember mothers, but in her mind it didn’t turn out that way,” says William Pollard, an archivist at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va., where Jarvis bequeathed her letters & other writings.
In 1914, Jarvis spearheaded a campaign to help persuade US president Woodrow Wilson to set aside May’s second Sunday as a national day for recognition. She orchestrated a letter-writing campaign to Wilson, lobbied influential politicians & clergymen & distributed brochures arguing about the importance of a national day for mothers.
Jarvis’ cause came from admiration for her recently deceased mother, Anna Maria & others like her, who had been an inspiration.
But by the early 1920s, she was sickened by the commercial circus she had helped create. She felt the day had nothing to do with celebrating the real achievements of women.
Jarvis spent her days crashing floral company conventions to protest & urging card companies to give the money they made from Mother’s Day to the poor. At one Mother’s Day convention where flowers were being sold she was arrested for disturbing the peace. She even launched a lawsuit to stop a Mother’s day festival from being held.
Her story didn’t end happily. Jarvis, who didn’t marry, died in 1948 alone & penniless in a hospital near Philadelphia from a illness brought on in part by her ceaseless campaign.
Just before her death Jarvis told a local reporter: “I devoted my entire life to Mother’s Day & the racketeers & grafters have taken it over.”
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