Mothers Day, A Maternity Session
I was going to write this post mostly highlighting a fun maternity session with a pregnant friend of mine as I thought it would be a nice way to celebrate Mother's Day and the first huge sacrifice they (moms) make for us. As I like to do, I thought I would look up a little historical data on the holiday and found some interesting tidbits of information that I think I will share and which completely changed my picture theme.
Mother's Day. Today it is a hallmark holiday celebrated in many forms around the world to honor mothers' for their sacrifice, love and support of you. In America we give cards, flowers, chocolates and often take mom out for a Sunday brunch. I believe we as people still think of Mother's Day as Our Mother's Day - what ever or who ever she may mean to you, but the person that is credited with creating Mother's Day felt that this just wasn't the case as it became commercialized. Everyone of us have a mother, naturally speaking, but Mother's Day was not created to honor a person just because they bore you and it certainly was not created to honor ALL mothers in general just because they have a child.
As usual it is interesting how history can change a way of seeing through small acts of capitalization. I read a historical article by Brian Handwerk, for National Geographic in which I will summarize from. Looking back, the first "Mother's Day" was held as a work group in the 1850s established by a woman named Ann Reeves Jarvis to improve sanitary conditions and fight infant disease. In the 1860's and 70's it then turned into Mother's Friendship Day and was celebrated by the mothers of confederate and union soldiers as a day of peace. Mrs. Jarvis had a daughter named Anna Jarvis and when mother Ann died in 1905 her daughter thought to honor her with an organized gathering at the local church. It is Anna that is credited with our modern "Mother's Day" which was made an American holiday in 1914. Due to the commercialization of the holiday by the 1920's she spent her entire later life denouncing it and trying to remove it from our calendars.
"For Jarvis it was a day where you'd go home to spend time with your mother and thank her for all that she did," said West Virginia Wesleyan's historian Katharine Antolini, who wrote "Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Defense of Her Mother's Day. "It wasn't to celebrate all mothers. It was to celebrate the best mother you've ever known—your mother [what ever that means to you] —as a son or a daughter." That's why Jarvis stressed the singular "Mother's Day," rather than the plural "Mothers' Day," Antolini explained.
Here are a couple of images of a dear friend of mine that was pregnant. I have intentionally only placed in photos that are limiting and do not reveal her identity but that I think are a beautiful representation of a mothers love for her unborn child.
