It’s Mother’s Day! At Tesa Babe, we are proud to say that we are a mostly mother-run establishment, as you can see from our very 80s-era photos above! Needless to say, we all get very excited when Mother’s Day rolls around. The other day we were talking, and we were wondering out loud where the day even came from. I mean, we know the reasoning behind it – because mothers rock, obviously. But who started it? Where did it come from?

In learning about the roots of Mother’s Day, it struck us how very motherly the origin story is. One of the earliest proponents of Mother’s Day was Julia Ward Howe, a suffragette and an abolitionist. Now this was a woman who rocked without a doubt. Howe imagined Mother’s Day not just as a day to celebrate motherhood, but as a day where mothers united in promoting world peace. Mothers… always thinking about the big picture, am I right?

Another kick-butt woman who got this Mother’s Day ball rolling was Ann Reeves Jarvis. Before the Civil War, Jarvis helped start Mother’s Day Work Clubs where she taught local women how to properly care for their children. After the Civil War, she organized Mothers’ Friendship Days where mothers gathered with former soldiers from both sides of the conflict to promote reconciliation.

But it was Jarvis’s daughter, Ann Jarvis, who succeeded in putting Mother’s Day officially on the calendar. The young Jarvis campaigned for an official Mother’s Day, not for herself but for her mother, since Ann Jarvis herself never married nor had any children of her own. She envisioned the holiday as a way to honor the sacrifices mothers made for their children.

So, thank you to the Jarvis’s, Julia Ward Howe, and all the mothers before them for giving us a day of appreciation. We are enamored with the idea of mothers helping mothers and we were delighted to discover that these early Mother’s Day proponents were doing just that when they conceived of the idea.

As we mentioned in our previous post, we are also obsessed with the idea of Mindful Motherhood, and this Mother’s Day has got us thinking about what that means to us.

Above all else, Mindful Motherhood, to us, means having a deep, unconditional love. For the mothers reading this, I’m sure you understand that there is nothing else in the world like it. There is nothing harder than being a mother, and yet there is no love that equals it.

When we think about Mindful Motherhood, we also think about the things we wish to instill in our children. We hope to raise them to be strong, healthy, happy people who have purpose in their lives. We want them to know how to love themselves and others and the planet. We want them to be successful, whatever that might mean to them, but we also wish them the ability to take the time to be present and to be content in their lives.

Honestly, the list is endless. So, instead of writing an infinite post about what we think it means (because we really could), we’d love to hear what Mindful Motherhood means to you. Please feel free to comment below 

Happy Mother’s Day everyone!!!