From Mothers’ Day to Memorial Day:
May We Gather, Grieve, and Build a More Perfect Union

In this Merry Month of May where April showers have brought May flowers, we pause to breathe – to savor the beauty, and also to create room for our grief as we move towards Memorial Day. The flowers, brunches, and greeting cards of modern Mother’s Day are lovely, yet they can easily crowd out space for grief and obscure the holiday’s far deeper beginnings. The true roots of Mothers' Day are not found in commercial celebration, but in the ashes of war, the cries of grieving families, and the fierce political imagination of women determined to build a more peaceful world. In truth, the origins of Mothers' Day are quite similar to those of Memorial Day.

In the wake of the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, Julia Ward Howe—abolitionist, suffragist, and author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic—was haunted by the catastrophic violence of modern warfare. She had witnessed not only the bloodshed of battlefields, but the profound devastation carried home by husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons forever gone, or forever changed. The horrors of industrialized war forced a painful reckoning: if society continued allowing men alone to govern matters of war and power, humanity itself remained at risk.

So Howe issued a bold challenge to the world:

“Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone know and bear the cost?”

Her answer was revolutionary. She envisioned “Mothers’ Day”—plural, collective, political—not as a sentimental occasion, but as an international movement for peace, cooperation, and women’s leadership. She called for women to rise across borders and declare that they would no longer allow their sons to be sacrificed to systems of violence. She believed women’s organizing for peace could become the next great leap in human evolution, ending war just as abolition had ended slavery.

Memorial Day arose from the same wounded historical soil. Originally known as Decoration Day, it began as communities sought to honor the Civil War dead and collectively grieve unprecedented loss. One of its earliest known observances was led by formerly enslaved Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, who honored fallen Union soldiers with ceremony and reverence. Memorial Day was, at its origin, not merely a patriotic ritual—it was an act of mourning, memory, and moral reconstruction.

Together, Mothers' Day and Memorial Day remind us that grief need not be limited to private sorrow. Grief can be communal. Political. Transformative.

Today, as Valarie Kaur teaches us, we are called to be brave with our grief.  Grief and rage arouse uncomfortable emotions. Both can become powerful practices of revolutionary love when we allow them to move through us—not as paralysis, but as power. We are living in a time when the wounds of division, violence, ecological crisis, and systemic injustice again call us to collective grieving. But grieving alone is not enough. The deeper invitation is to harness our broken hearts to imagine and build new futures.

This is the bridge before us now. 

In Schenectady, we are called to embody this legacy not only through remembrance, but through participation.

As we remember and honor those who devoted and sacrificed their lives for the protection of civil liberties, the enduring practice of democracy, and the promise of more peaceful and cooperative futures, we are called into participation at many scales; at home, in our cities, in our nation, on our planet. 

Here in Schenectady, as Member-Owners of our food cooperative, we are called to strengthen the life and work of Electric City Community Grocery by attending the annual meeting on June 14th, voting, and deepening our investment in cooperative democracy and equitable, regenerative food systems. More than a grocery store, this beloved institution is an experiment in local resilience, shared stewardship, and community nourishment. By welcoming new members into its fold, we help cultivate the kind of civic belonging and ecological connection our fractured world desperately needs.

We are also called inward—toward our own bodies, imaginations, and healing. Ashley Rutledge’s (MO #1193) somatic dance workshops (May 24, June 13) is more than movement; it offers practice in reconnecting with our deepest desires and embodied wisdom. To move, to grieve, to rage, to dream—these are not luxuries, but essential disciplines for transitioning from a politics of trauma to a politics of flourishing.

And we are called outward, into movement-building through ONE Schenectady.

As historian Howard Zinn (1922-2010) wisely reminds us:

“Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy…”

Voting matters. [Please vote on May 19 and June 23!]  Yet voting alone is insufficient. As Zinn emphasized, lasting social transformation emerges when ordinary people educate, agitate, and organize “in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools” and build enduring movements that can shape public life far beyond election cycles. ONE Schenectady invites us into precisely this work—not simply to support individuals, but to join a collective movement committed to justice, equity, and democratic renewal.

Here, too, we might remember the wisdom of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, whose Great Law of Peace profoundly influenced the democratic imagination of this nation–both our Founding Fathers who drafted our Constitution, and the Sisters in Spirit who fought for women’s suffrage. In Haudenosaunee governance, women—Clan Mothers—hold essential authority in matters of war and peace. Their leadership reflects an ancient understanding that peace is not passive; it is cultivated through courageous, relational, and intergenerational responsibility. And everyday practices of connection, mutual care and joyful music and movement. 

This wisdom feels especially urgent now.

More than ever, we are being asked to recover democracy not merely as a system of voting, but as a living practice of belonging—to ourselves, to one another, and to the Earth.

Mothers' Day and Memorial Day, in their deepest origins, were never about passive remembrance or private sentimentality. They were calls to collective moral awakening. Calls to organize grief into governance. Calls to transform mourning into movement.

So may we, in this season, honor our ancestors not simply with flowers or flags, but with courageous participation.

May we gather.
May we vote.
May we dance.
May we grieve.
May we organize.
May we build.

And may Schenectady once again become the city that lights the world—not merely through industry, but through the radiant, earthly powers of revolutionary and evolutionary love.