Happy Mother's Day to You! Yes, YOU.

How interesting that Mother's Day and World AIDS Orphans Day fall in the same weekend this year.
It's overwhelming to try to wrap my mind around the enormity of the gratefulness I feel for having been able to be a mother. I love to hear Her scream at me, "NO Mama! NO!" I do! Because She has grown to be a toddler, and I am here to witness it.
I feel the weight of that privilege extra in light of these two Days of remembrance. In America, if we can't get pregnant, we have a litany of medical interventions to help us. We take for granted that we have the care and nutrition for a healthy pregnancy, we take for granted that we will have a team of people there to make sure our deliveries end with a family that is happy and whole. That we will see them take steps, go to kindergarten, that we will get to roll our eyes when they become teenagers. It's a rare tragedy when one of those steps does not fall into place in the end.

But most mothers in the world do not have that.

In East Africa, one in 11 women who become pregnant will not live to hold their child. Count 11 mothers in your life. Imagine what would happen with one of them gone.
In Ethiopia, more than 1 in 10 babies die. (In the US it is less than 1 in 100).
Count 10 children in your life. Imagine if one was lost.
In most of the world, becoming a mother is a tenuous thing.
It is too much to expect, almost too much to hope for, that your children will all survive to become adults, and that you will live long enough to see it happen.

There are over 15 million children around the world orphaned by AIDS alone. That's more children than all of the people in New York, Paris, and Bangkok combined.

What if Little One was one of those children? Who would keep Her safe? Who would teach Her things She needs to know? Who would remember Her favorite lullaby when She wakes up from a bad dream? Who would hug Her?

For Mother's Day I want to celebrate, and I will, because I have so much to be happy about, both as a mom and because of my own mom, and all the mothers that make my life so great!

But I also want to remember the wishes in the hearts of moms around the world, whose babies are now left in our hands, as a global community, to look after. I love the quote that "children belong to the world". They do. It makes us all mothers and fathers, whether we have our "own" children or not.

What better day than Mother's Day, what better day than World AIDS Orphans Day, to take a step towards keeping more mothers and babies alive to celebrate together.

http://www.fromharmtohome.org/?ms=ws_ircz_zzz_home_zz_10zzzz

And what better day to take a step towards caring for those children left in our hands.

http://www.artistsforcharity.org/afcchildrenshome/

If you have children, if you have a mother, celebrate! Celebrate hard; we are so lucky.
If you think you don't have children, if you think you are not part of the community of mothers, think again. In the world, you belong to all the children, and they belong to you.
Happy Mothers Day.