Mom’s Day – An Everyday Touch – Understanding Bias… Empowering Outcomes™

Doc X MD Storyoid ©: Mom’s Day, as we know it, was first celebrated in 1908, when Anna Jarvis honored her mother’s memory at St Andrew’s Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia. Ann Reeves Jarvis was an activist in social issues of the day. She is given credit for founding Mother’s Day Work Clubs.

During one of her Sunday school lessons in 1876 Anna Jarvis is attributed to finding her inspiration for Mother’s Day, by closing a lesson with the prayer: “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother’s day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it.”- Ann Reeves Jarvis 1

While more than a century ago Ann Jarvis was driven to honor the unconditional love of her mom little did she know that neuroscience would conclusively show that lack of stimulus and touch in early child development causes the early and often release of the stress hormone, cortisol adversely affecting brain growth.

Doc X MD Feelingoid ©: The 3 minute Doc X MD funny feelings© “Mom’s Day – Honoring A Touch” ,- Celebrating Mother’s Day – Honoring Her Touch discuss how honoring and implementing the symbolism and power of motherhood, regardless of our gender, can be an everyday touch not just a second Sunday in May remembrance.

For most of us the thought of mother, mom, or mommy often conjures up feelings of joy or sadness depending on the wholeness of the relationship from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high.

Yet regardless of the extent of our “maternal relationship experience” when we think of mother’s day we nostalgically yearn for comforting family picnics, ice cream, and apple pie.

While Mother’s Day can cause us to reflexively glow in great memories or wallow in what might have been is certainly true… It’s a Doc X MD Funny Feeling© to know the genuine gift that mom’s bring to us is their healing touch in everything we see and do… No matter whether our actual experiences with our mom add up to a whole lot or not very much… Mother’s Day is a time to recognize and appreciate we all grow leaps and bounds with even the slightest mother’s touch.

Doc X MD Opinioniod ©: When I think of a mom’s touch either physical or emotional… I think of a state of mind where there’s peace, comfort, safety, kindness, and unconditional love that’s devotional…

The poet Robert Frost wrote “Home is the place where, when you have to go there they have to take you in.” The phrase captures the essence of grace – the free and unmerited favor of God often attributed to mom’s for whom regardless of whether we deserve it or have earned total unconditional love we get it and are absolved of any sin…

As you read this Doc X MD Xplains© you may be one of many who have lost your mom due to illness, accident, or natural causes. You may have been given up for adoption and never knew or saw your mom.

Respectfully, you may also be one of many who like the “Hatfields and the McCoys” have emotional walls and barriers between yourself and your mom for reasons that could fill a television multi-act drama that give us painful pauses. Alternatively, you may also be glowing with happy experiences of regularly enjoying your mom every day.

But may I suggest wherever you find yourself in a mother relationship, present or absent, if you have the sensitivity of truly missing a mom… as Boyz II Men capture in their song “Mama” then you understand the meaning of a mom’s touch in every way.

Please consider, whether you’re a man or woman that you take this feeling and celebrate Mom’s Day every day by touching another’s life with the essence of a mom’s grace. Allow yourself in joy not sadness to pay forward with kindness, forgiveness, compassion and unconditional love a mom’s touch to all you meet and embrace…

Kiononia,

Doc X MD

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Jarvis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafton,_West_Virginia

Anatolini, Katherine Lane (2009). Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Struggle for Control of Mother’s Day (PhD Diss). Pg 25 West Virginia University. ISBN 978-1-124-17972-8. OCLC 610042090