We Celebrate the Mothers Who Taught Resilience, We Celebrate Mothering
by Walden Wright
Yesterday we celebrated Mother’s Day. Today we remember. And maybe that’s the deeper work. We still celebrate. Just differently. It is about mothering. And revolutions. Women who stayed.
Mother’s Day comes with its bouquets and brunches, but the Monday after? That’s where the real stories live. That’s when the dishes are still in the sink, the inbox is full, and the women who hold the world together go back to doing exactly that—without applause.
This post isn’t just for biological mothers, though it honors them with reverence. It’s for every woman who has mothered in the margins. The ones who didn’t get a card. The ones who couldn’t afford to take the day off. The ones who mothered quietly, in the middle of other people’s chaos, holding the line without thanks.
It’s for the ones who stayed. In the grief. In the fight. In the work of protecting something more fragile than themselves.
We live in a country that claims to celebrate motherhood but refuses to support it. We’re watching lawmakers hand out “medals for makin’ babies,” as Joe Bob says, while gutting child tax credits and denying parental leave. We hear the rhetoric of “family values” used to pass policies that separate families, punish single mothers, and endanger the very children they claim to protect.
But mothering—real mothering—is not a medal or a campaign ad. It’s not soft. It’s not decorative. It’s not patriotic in the way flags are patriotic.
Mothering, in its truest form, is revolutionary. They are the revolution.
To mother is to nourish life when the systems don’t.
To mother is to refuse numbness.
To mother is to keep choosing gentleness even when the world goes hard.
We have never needed mothers more than we do right now. And we have never done less to honor them.
It’s easy to celebrate birth. It’s harder to fund pre-K.
It’s easy to praise sacrifice. It’s harder to pay women a living wage.
It’s easy to say “thank you.” It’s harder to say, “We were wrong to build a world that runs on your exhaustion.”
But that’s the real story, isn’t it?
That women—especially mothers—have been doing what the state refuses to do: feeding the hungry, calming the chaos, cleaning up after cruelty, holding the center while everything else frays.
We’re told motherhood is sacred. But we don’t protect it. We politicize it. We sell it. We use it to score points while leaving the mothers themselves to carry the weight alone.
And somehow, they still rise.
Every teacher who buys snacks out of her own paycheck so a student doesn’t go hungry—that’s mothering.
Every community elder who speaks truth to a boy heading down the wrong road—that’s mothering.
Every activist who shows up again and again to protect children from violence, from poverty, from erasure—that is mothering.
And no one does that work for the praise.
In our own corner of the world, Liberty Lane poured two mugs of cafecito yesterday morning and handed one to her niece Daisy. No speeches. No slogans. Just quiet care between generations.
That’s where the real power lives—in the ordinary, daily acts of showing up for each other when no one is watching.
Daisy didn’t post a filtered photo. She didn’t need to. She knows the difference between performative care and the kind that takes root. Between admiration and actual support. She knows what it means to be mothered—not by someone perfect, but by someone present.
There are so many kinds of mothers this country refuses to see.
The ones who didn’t give birth, but raised a child anyway.
The ones who lost a child and still find ways to give love.
The ones who mother communities, classrooms, movements.
There are women who have never been called “Mom” but have shaped a hundred lives. And there are women who have been called “Mom” by everyone but the state, because their partnerships or papers weren’t recognized by law.
They mother anyway.
This Monday-after is for them. For the invisible. For the exhausted. For the brave. For the women who keep mothering in a world that keeps asking them to do more with less.
And for those who didn’t celebrate yesterday—for the motherless, the estranged, the grieving, the aching—your story belongs, too.
There is no one way to mother.
There is no one way to be mothered.
There is only the act of choosing to love when it would be easier not to.
History will remember the ones who held office, passed laws, made noise. But I hope it also remembers the mothers. The ones who stayed. Who stitched the broken things back together. Who loved harder than the headlines.
The ones who fed a future they might never see.
If you want to honor a mother today, don’t just post her photo.
Ask who she had to fight to survive.
Ask what she had to lose to raise you.
Ask what she still carries—and whether she ever got to rest.
Then show up. In policy. In presence. In paychecks. In praise that isn’t just symbolic.
Because flowers fade. And real gratitude shows up the next day, when no one is watching.
So to every woman who mothered someone into strength—thank you.
To every woman who chose care in a culture of cruelty—thank you.
To every woman who stayed—thank you.
We see you.
We need you.
And we will not let your labor be forgotten.
Want more?
Read Liberty Lane’s “Porch Talk” about teachers and Cinco de Mayo.
Or Daisy Justice, Joe Bob, or Walden on the anniversary of Nazi book burning.
Call to Action:
💬 Tag a mother figure who helped you become who you are.
🧭 Support a local mother-led cause or community today.
📣 Share this post if you believe mothering is a revolutionary act.