"When sleeping women wake, mountains will move." Chinese Proverb
While my women's organization S.A.R.A.H. is known to broadcast statements of condemnation over the suffering at the hands of another, the current state of affairs in the world, namely the Ukrane-Russia and Israeli-Hammas wars, warrants a different kind of response from an organization of women whose name states, "Mother of All Nations."
Today we are met with yet another clarion call, yet this one is for women to stand in our Mother archetype and protect all that we consider sacred. However, unlike other outspoken statements, this statement is not with vigor or rank, but with deep contemplation over our role in the human condition that makes such atrocities possible. We can vote and our dollar has superpowers, yet the power we have over healing the human condition of war far exceeds any war machine. Perhaps it simply requires a little awareness and intention to clean our own house.
Women are stepping into leadership more and more, but how are we leading? Especially women who lead women?
Are we getting in our own way?
With even the best of intentions, are we confusing crowning our sacred power with ascending to the throne?
Are we lifting other women, or are we climbing over them?
Are we stepping aside to allow those with less privilege to lead, or are we always a step ahead? Indeed, we have some housework to do.
In 1870 Julia Ward Howe presented humanity with the Mother's Day Proclamation. In April of 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Mother's Day a national holiday. World War I began 3 months later.
While we may not see the immediate impact on the two major wars today, imagine where we would be today if the women who held the original proclamation in their hands 153 years ago took this to heart.
We can all ponder the impact that would have had in July of 1914.
Perhaps they did not realize they had the power or were so steeped in the systems that have held women in place they could not imagine a place where they could begin. Yet we have agency, rights, and an unprecedented level of awareness. We no longer wear bustles so why are we still bound in such systems that we have full control over?
In the end, we all have a responsibility to do what the women before us did not have our privileges to do; heal the wounds that bind us and all of humanity by showing up as the Mother archetype that Julia so strongly articulates. We must start where we lead. But first, we have some important self-reflection to do.
The Mother's Day Proclamation
"Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
Let's ask ourselves why we are still facing the same carnage.
Why is this call for an end to the carnage still unanswered?
What are we leaving our granddaughters to do?
We are no longer waiting for an individual or a congress to take this on. It is clear that every single woman is being called to take the staff and start proclaiming our unfathomable power rooted in love, compassion, and awareness of our own shadows with integrity.