Tag Archives: mothers

Burden Sharing: A Mother’s Day Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

12 May

What we don’t need in the midst of struggle is shame for being human. Brené Brown

To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear. Stephen Levine

The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.” My bones said, “Write the poems.”  Andrea Gibson

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds. Laurell K. Hamilton

That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.  Khaled Hosseini

May your forgiveness still the hunger of the wound. John O’Donohue

The mistakes of the world are warning message for you.  Amit Kalantri

The wind will rise; we can only close the shutters.  Adrienne Rich

One of the highlights of my recent trip to South Africa was meeting Fr. Michael Lapsley, the founder of the Institute for Healing of Memories (www.healing-memories.org) a program which has resonated with communities from Durban to Detroit.  Fr. Lapsley has overcome his own trauma from violence inflicted during the transition from apartheid to a reasonably functional democracy.  He has turned his own affliction into ministry, helping mothers and others who carry great burdens through their lives to lay some of those burdens down, to swap out the toxic effects of trauma for healing and forgiveness, recovering some of the energy that their families and the world at large often require of them. 

This engagement with the Institute, which I hope will continue to develop, is the latest iteration of an organizational  priority to better balance policy and personal engagements which already includes work on Servant Leadership with Dr. Robert Thomas and on Inner Economy with Dr. Lisa Berkley.  While they differ somewhat in focus and intellectual underpinnings, all convey the truth that we have collectively struck an unholy alliance between policy and technology which largely bypasses dimensions of character, compassion and service which are essential attributes  of societies which refuse to give in to hatred, grievance and entitlement, which refuse to abandon the aspiration of a world in which humans and other manifestations of the created order can live in a better harmony, can nurture and celebrate the commons instead of seeking to control it, can cease the degrading march of green and public spaces into private ownership and exploitation.  

What does this have to do with Mother’s Day?  Several things I believe.

Amidst the annual panic to sign cards and buy grocery store flowers, amidst and annual blitz of commercial propaganda selling the aspiration of “all” women for the gift of diamonds and other jewelry, it is worth remembering that the person deemed most responsible for this annual faux tribute to mothers, Anna Jarvis, was so put off by the superficiality of the day – cards instead of conversations, diamonds instead of dialogue – that she petitioned to have the annual event which was designed to honor her own mother revoked.  But by that time, this latest in a sequence of transactional honoring had caught on. We had eagerly purchased another surface, created yet another opportunity to dive into a few hours of recognition which ought not to be calendar-induced nor satisfied by sparkling pieces of pressurized coal. 

Many of the mothers associated with programs such as Healing of Memories don’t have any reason to anticipate or welcome this annual bling.  They often bear the scars of a difficult and demanding  life, scars which many are determined to bear with dignity lest the children they seek to protect would have their own enthusiasm for life dampened by the struggles of their parents. These are some of  the mothers determined as they are able to “touch with love” even as the winds howl beyond the shutters and the mistakes of the world beat at their very doors. These are some of the mothers determined to live poetic lives even as hurts are deep and inspiration remains beyond reach.  These are some of the mothers for whom the storms all-too-rarely relent but who nevertheless accept the responsibility to quell the fear of those around them without exposing for family or public view the fear also raging inside themselves.

The three hopeful  program priorities of Healing of Memories – prevention, healing and empowerment – convey a complicated message for participating mothers, for all mothers really.   Yes, mothers know well of prevention, the injections that prevent childhood deaths, the clothes that buffer the hostile elements, the diets which help to guarantee proper physical development, the out-loud reading that paves the way for future learning.  But beyond the walls of domicile, there are threats of even greater consequence, threats from more sophisticated weapons and degraded agriculture, threats from the serendipity of climate disruptions and the hatred of humans given license to grow even more toxic.  These we must also do much more to prevent at the level of policy and governance if the prevention undertaken by mothers as mothers is truly to be honored.

And what of healing? Yes we can bind the scrapes of children as we are able.  And if we are fortunate enough we can enlist medical professionals to help ensure that the sicknesses of children don’t become chronic, even life threatening.  But children become physically and emotionally disabled. In some parts of the world they die in shocking, horrific numbers.  And in all parts of the world, children face disappointment, lonliness and heartache.  And they look to parents – to mothers – for succor and solace, for some modicum of healing from people who often struggle with their own wounds, their own pain, their own disappointment and heartache.  What a former teacher of mine, Henri Nouwen, referenced often (via Carl Jung) as “wounded healers” applies to many more of us, certainly many more mothers, than we generally acknowledge.

We must become clearer with ourselves about just how vulnerable a species we can be – how long the distance often is between the wounds we inflict and their healing.  We should also be clear about our collective creation of a world with many ways to inflict damage and fewer ways to heal what we have inflicted.  And so we must follow the inclinations of those mothers seeking to become more accomplished healers, to invite unburdening rather than trying (largely in vain) to seal off our wounds, trying to sequester them in those deep places away from public scrutiny or even consciousness itself, forgetting that the pain of children – much like our own — will eventually find the means to “claw its way out.”

Ultimately, we must find a more effective way to turn off the spickets of destruction and abuse that complicate and undermine healing in all its forms.  We must do more in our policy engagements to ensure broader spaces where the bombs no longer fall, the storms no longer rage, the relentless soiling of our own habitats is at least suspended, making spaces more conducive to healing, to reconciliation, even to empowering young people and others to face the strong winds and invest more of themselves in making a better life, not only a better living. We have learned much from mothers about how this is done, how they inspire more courageous, empowered and intentional living despite the “hungry wounds” they often experience in their own souls and bodies.

This burden sharing is what we strive to better achieve but also to better honor, this day and every day.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Care Package: A Mother’s Day Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

9 May

Please don’t judge me too much until you are older and know more things. Ann Brashares

She gave me everything before she gave me nothing.  Rebecca Solnit

Motherwhelm isn’t a problem, it’s a rite of passage. Beth Berry

My daughter, my mother, her mother, her mother’s mother. It is as if they have left footprints in the snow. Try as I might to deviate, my feet fall gently but firmly into their well-worn grooves. Pippa Grace

For a woman to birth something other than children and then mother it with the same sense of purpose, attention, and care came as an astonishment, even to me.  Sue Monk Kidd

She caught herself working so hard at mothering that she forgot to enjoy her children. Susan Wiggs

I have seen him climbing a tree while she stood beneath him in unutterable anguish; she had to let him climb, for boys must be brave, but I am sure that, as she watched him, she fell from every branch.  J.M. Barrie

There is always the fantasy of maternal love, but it does not accommodate a mother’s fear of her children.  Stephanie Bishop

Earlier this week, I spent a few hours with a dying cousin, a wonderful younger man who was surrounded by extended family and health professionals offering all manner of caregiving. My role amidst this glorious frenzy of care was a relatively simple one, to help ease his transition from this life to whatever might come next.

Part of my intervention involved a series of familiar (to him) prayers and readings directed not only to him in his time of need but to those who are still ministering to him in various ways, who makes sure he eats what he can, takes what medicines are prescribed, and even ensures that stories, affections and even tears are shared while he is here to share them. Those who have cared for the sick and dying know how much can be required of them more than they imagined, more than they might even feel that they have in them.

In this time of COVID-19, many millions around the world, including so many mothers, have had their caregiving capacities pushed beyond their limits. In various global regions, in places wracked by a spreading and largely unvaccinated pandemic, in places often characterized by gross economic inequalities, empty schools, unproductive farmlands and threats to home life and health access from armed groups, mothers and other caregivers wonder how they can get their children back on track, how to summon the energy to guarantee sustenance in an environment that continues to pile challenge on top of challenge, all of which have at least one thing in common – they are not the fault of the caregivers themselves.

In this regard, I recall an image from yesterday of an Afghan man clearly doing all that he could do to hold it together as he stood alongside the bloody, lifeless body of his daughter, one of the victims of yet another senseless shooting spree in that country. Another child taken from the world much too soon. Another family having to cope with a murderous end to their season of caregiving. There are hardly words to express such sadness.

Such loss, albeit with less-tragic lines, is also a feature of more “developed” parts of the world, places where caregiving has also mutated under the pandemic cloud of these past 15 months. This week, many mothers have taken to social and mainstream media to reflect on a year of caregiving in an environment over which they have little control and have often lost much, including their careers, their self-esteem and their chunks of their mental health. One of these mothers noted the vast sums of her energy trying (and sometimes failing) to preserve her income and continue to “birth” things in the wider world; to keep her children focused on learning though games and digital screens; to show tangible support and concern over zoon as parents “distantly” age and even succumb to the virus; and to hold on to sanity amidst logistical challenges which were both unplanned and wholly unpredictable.

A second mother wrote about having to accept being “merely OK” in meeting these logistical challenges. A third noted the strains that come with spending more time together with nuclear family than they ever imagined would be the case. A fourth spoke of shrinking circles of concern as friends and family struggle to maintain connective tissue during this long season of fear, uncertainty and isolation. Still another, a mother who just recently gave birth, described herself as almost “invisible” at a time when friends and family members would normally be flocking to hold the baby and offer whatever practical assistance they were able. One particularly thoughtful writer, Sari Azout, described the challenges of keeping the many dimensions of her life afloat while “mothering humans who never sleep,” a situation which may or may not be adjustable in the short-term, but one which is certainly unsustainable.

If “motherwhelm” is indeed a rite of passage, it is a rite accompanied by levels of anxiety, fear and disappointment to at least rival any time in our past. Some mothers in this time of pandemic are so busy working at being mothers that they have forgotten how to enjoy their children. Other mothers, who may not have seen their children for months on end, struggle to maintain connection to lives in flux, lives that they fear might be slipping away from them, slipping into a mode more forgetful and inattentive.

While it might not seem automatically relevant, the fears and courage of caregivers have bear a direct message for those of us who ostensibly create policy norms for the global community. While there is surely much to discuss, we talk endlessly in UN spaces about women, but rarely about mothers. We talk endlessly about children, but rarely about those who struggle to provide that practical, tangible care that can be so tenuous but which is indispensable to keeping alive their physical, emotional and cognitive well being. And it is much too easy for many of us in policy settings, especially those of us not actively caring for children or aging parents, to ignore or forget about the vast gulf which often separate our resolutions (even with their sometimes considerable protection and humanitarian consequences) and the often-relentless logistics of caregiving at local level, especially care administered under a cloud of multiple stressors.

Amidst all of the policy concerns at the UN this week, including not-unproblematic elections for senior leadership, eliminating the still-vast disparities of global digital access, and the horrific, unresolved violence affecting people in Tigray, on the streets of Myanmar and in the mosques of East Jerusalem, Estonia hosted a Security Council Arria Formula meeting to asses the impact of COVID-19 on children and communities already under strain from armed violence, climate change and a lack of health, protection and other government services.

We were grateful for the discussion as we are for the diverse UN capacities in the field seeking to end child recruitment by armed groups, restore educational options, address chronic food insecurity and much more. While conflict prevention remains an elusive goal in the Council and other UN chambers, the organization has done much to provide lifesaving assistance and advocate state responsibilities for children too often under siege.

That said, and as we noted at the time, talking about children in distress is low-hanging fruit for all of us in policy settings. There may be no other space in which we can easily appear so sincere while under-playing the specific policy changes that we need to both enable and enforce, part of which involves accompanying mothers and other caregivers whose interactions with children and community are so intensely practical, who continue to find ways to “make do” when the logistics of “making” are so fraught with difficulty.

Yes, as noted by Canada (Group of Friends) during this Arria session, we need more child protection advisors in the field alongside UN peacekeepers and experts. Yes, as noted by Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, we need better verification and monitoring mechanisms to track and address abuses against children. Yes, as noted by the US we must prioritize services to support children with disabilities whose prospects in conflict and pandemic zones are even more dire. Yes, as noted by Tunisia, we must do more to ensure that children under “suspicion” of being part of armed groups are freed from prisons where they routinely “languish in unsafe and unsanitary conditions.” And yes, as noted by UNICEF’s Fontaine, we need more “sustained engagement” with armed groups on child protection and release and, despite the pandemic, we must also pledge to “stay close to where children need us.”

All good, but these are needs which are not news to us and as several states willingly acknowledged, have yet to receive sufficient capacity response either in personnel or in funding. Moreover, in the two hours which I was engaged in this meeting, I don’t recall a single reference to caregivers; not the valiant UN responders but the mothers and others who are doing the hard, practical work — and often making the hard decisions — regarding how to maintain some modicum of tangible progress in enhancing the best interests of the child.

These are the questions looming for us over this otherwise fine policy session. What is likely to change in the field in response to events such as these? Will there be more funding? More protection advisors? More international accountability for child-abusing states and armed groups? More determined effort to stem the violence which does more than anything else to limit options for children? But beyond this, how do we support caregivers, the mothers and others whose bag of remedial ideas might well have largely emptied, caregivers who can barely attend to children and others in their circle while their own mental and physical health is in demonstrable decline? How do we support the care that mothers often struggle to provide, care which is both indispensable for children and for which no UN agency can possibly be a reliable surrogate?

I wrote a piece a few years ago entitled “Other Mothers,” an ode to caregivers who share love and perform services normally (and not without reason) associated with biological mothers. As we recognize, there remain numerous, viable paths to caregiving, even in this time of pandemic limitation. But while many of those paths are now strewn with debris and explosive remnants of various sorts deposited by the more selfish, narcissistic and violent among us, these are paths that still merit risking the journey. Indeed these are the paths which bear the promise of a future less-affected by the emotional and physical scars of the present; a future that is healthier and safer for both children and caregivers; a future that can restore the promises embedded in the “well-worn grooves” of our snowy footprints; promises to children who may now never seem to sleep but who are also free to play and learn, to risk and dream; a future where caregivers need never again confront the blunt and unimaginable end of young lives snuffed out long before their time.

During this pandemic, many mothers worldwide have felt obliged to take a step back in lives which were already under considerable stress, some of whom might even be doubting if the children who now pack the spaces inside their multiple dwellings will ever have a chance to overcome sickness, trauma and disappointment, will ever again be able to enjoy lives of nutrition and education, of health access and economic opportunity. These are the caregivers who need more of our attention, those who hold the key to children who no longer need to hide from the assaults of a world which seems to be spinning out of orbit. We owe these caregivers more, on Mothers Day for sure, but everyday.

Tags: , , , ,

Mamma Mia: A Mother’s Day Message to Fit the Times, Dr. Robert Zuber

10 May

Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did – that everything involving our children was painful in some way.  Debra Ginsberg

What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. Margaret Atwood

Women, who struggle and suffer pain to ensure the continuation of the human race, make much tougher and more courageous soldiers than all those big-mouthed freedom-fighting heroes put together.  Anne Frank

It’s come at last, she thought, the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache. Betty Smith

Being a parent wasn’t just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.  Jodi Picoult

Mothers today cannot just respond to their kids’ needs, they must predict them–and with the telepathic accuracy of Houdini. Susan Douglas

It is a chilly and blustery Mother’s Day morning in New York – more like late March than mid-May.  It is also another day when legions must stay physically distanced from their mothers who, if you are not still young enough to live at home, remain beyond the reach of direct contact regardless of their health or other life circumstances.   For some especially unfortunate souls, this Mother’s Day is destined to be their last, leaving this life in perhaps a more fearful and discouraging manner than could ever have been imagined – without those loved ones alongside whom they have stood for many long years now unable to stand by them at this time of their passing.

I have been in many such homes and hospital rooms in a prior life, and I can barely manage a more heartbreaking thought.

Of course not all that heartbreak, not all of that emotional uncertainty and longing, is confined to the edges of a mother’s resting place.  The virus has adjusted some of what “mother” means, including injecting positive new opportunities for some to bond with children still at home, allowing them to witness to changes in their children’s lives that they might otherwise have been too busy to appreciate.  But for many others it ushers in an intensifying fear that the children they have borne will now fall further out of the loop, fall further behind their peers, will forever be watching their backs while others have their eyes on what little still exists in their purses and wallets.  It is not clear yet what “opportunity” will mean for these children in the coming phase – for employment, for schooling, for access to public spaces without the threat of violence or discrimination.  And for too many mothers, it is not at all clear what they should do – what it is even possible to do – to ensure the safety and well-being of children when there are now so many viral and political forces allied against those interests, so many invisible threats poised for a dangerous incarnation.

In various parts of this country and others, some mothers today have decided to join a lengthening chorus line – egged on by preachers and politicians – deciding to roll the dice on their own and their children’s future, hoping that the virus will degrade before their family fortunes do, betting on behalf of their children that efforts to reconvene “normalcy” and recover livelihoods will spare them the loss of a parent.

These are choices that, in the overly-sentimentalized mother’s days of past years, would have been inconceivable.  Those days were about flowers, “I love you mommy” cards, and dinners outside the home.  And while we all recognized that such ceremonial expressions were often better for business than they were for mothers, we did them anyway, collapsing too-often the sentiments that might well have been more beneficially distributed over longer periods into one Sunday in May.

Indeed, during such times, we collectively indulged a caricature of “mother,” the self-less, stay-at-home force with a seemingly uncanny ability to predict the needs of children before the demanding and whining could commence, a self-serving, taken-for-granted “fabrication” of a parent that, in too many aspects, didn’t always hit whatever mark was intended by our scribbled cards and floral arrangements.

This caricature needs immediate amending. In policy spaces like the UN, our primary focus is on “women” rather than mothers, acknowledging skills too-long undervalued and ensuring spaces for participation that are (hopefully) part of a larger project of engagement which recognizes the large number of voices of all races, cultures, religions, genders and social classes who remain on the outside of political and peace processes at a time when they should already be finding themselves much closer to the center.

But among those mis-positioned voices are many mothers.  Within the UN system, it is the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) that retains a laser focus on mostly newer mothers and the even newer lives they are bringing into the world.   For many, the obstacles that must be overcome in order to ensure healthy births and equally healthy mothers to care for them are formidable indeed.   From food insecurity to limited hygiene, the challenges for new and expectant mothers in many global regions remain heart-wrenching despite the best efforts of UNFPA, UNICEF and partner NGOs.  And with the complicating factor of COVID-19, invisible bonds of misery are likely to be extended across the seas, connecting the fears of young mothers with those older mothers gasping for their final breaths.

All around the world, it seems, the lives of mothers are becoming more complex in their physical and emotional circumstances.  All around the world, the needs of mothers to have their voices registered in community and political life remain largely unmet.   All around the world, women continue to endure in relative obscurity the pain and struggle which so often accompany the gift of new life which they bear.  All around the world, those who nurture at least part of our common future must work too hard to offer their testimony on what that future should look like, and to have that testimony respected.

I entitled this post “Mamma Mia” because I was advised by colleagues of the many emotions that this phrase has come to embrace, especially for persons of Italian descent.   From fear and exasperation to joy and surprise, the phrase captures better than most the range of emotions – deep and real – that characterizes the lives of so many mothers, especially in this time of viral challenge.   Many mothers know the heartache that life seems poised to inflict on their children, and understand as well the limitations of their ability to protect them from it.  And many mothers continue to bear at least portions of this heartache in private as the world swirls around them in all of its anxiety, greed and self-importance, oblivious in the main to what the current, pervasive and often cruel mis-applications of our human condition mean for the lives of the children who are just getting started walking their long and uncertain path:

Oblivious as well to the emotional and physical needs of mothers devoted — this day and every day — to accompanying such children while they walk.

Tags: , ,

Mother Load: Easing the Burdens of Clinging and Mourning, Dr. Robert Zuber

12 May

Tapestry

It’s the one job where, the better you are the more surely you won’t be needed in the long run. Barbara Kingsolver

Children are knives, my mother once said. They don’t mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don’t we, we clasp them until the blood flows.  Joanne Harris

No one is ever quite ready; everyone is always caught off guard. Parenthood chooses you. And you open your eyes, look at what you’ve got, say “Oh my gosh,” and recognize that of all the balls there ever were, this is the one you should not drop.  Marisa de los Santos

I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, Mother, what was war?  Eve Merriam

There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore. Amy Tan

As virtually everyone recognizes here in the US and in much of the rest of the world, today is the “designated day” to honor mothers in ways both concrete and, at times, overly sentimental.

It’s been a while since I had a mother around to fuss over, but I am mindful this week of those in my life for whom the pain of mother-loss is still fresh, persons now immersed in a bit of holiday-inspired wondering if they did enough, said enough, honored enough while mother was still with us to ease and enrich her transition from this life to whatever might come next.

And then there are those new to mothering, including persons close to me, mothers who understand the challenges of the moment, who wince at the ubiquitous news stories about some of the issues on the UN agenda this week:  weapons of mass destruction and mass deforestation, climate-related displacements and the violence and lawlessness that seems to be engulfing places like Libya.  And yet, despite the possibility of bringing into the world a life filled more with challenges than satisfactions, these mothers have decided to bet on a human future in the most tangible manner possible – a life to which a mother will surely and steadfastly cling, even when it cuts.

Amidst the flowers and Hallmark cards, the birth notices and family brunches, there is yet another dimension of truth to Mother’s Day – the times when mothers must say a final and mournful good-bye to those “slippery fish” of children later felled by disease or armed violence, by circumstance or service.  This past Monday, the UN held its annual event honoring some of those “children,” those serving under the UN flag who perished while pursuing with often great courage what we all fervently strive to ensure even if we’re not always sure how:  a world at peace.

As one might expect, many of those honored fallen were serving as UN peacekeepers, including in some of the most dangerous conflict zones on earth – in Mali and South Sudan, in Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.   The list of the fallen was painfully long again this year, a point also taken up in earnest the following day in the Security Council under Indonesia’s leadership, during which delegations explored the means – especially through better training and equipment – to more effectively ensure the safety of the women and men mandated within peace operations to protect others under circumstances that are uncomfortable at best. Delegations on Tuesday clearly reaffirmed their full support and respect for those who serve in peacekeeping operations or in related assignments such as in Hodeidah port (Yemen). Such support was aptly summarized by Ireland whose Ambassador proclaimed that “we are as proud of the blue helmet as we are of the Shamrock.”

Not only peacekeepers were honored at this solemn Monday event but also fallen humanitarian workers and food security experts; people providing shelter and provisions for refugees and other victims of violence and natural disaster; people facing “unfriendly fire” during the course of their service or simply reserving a seat on a malfunctioning airplane. Indeed, people who for various reasons were now being saluted and mourned at the UN by mothers and other family members, not because they were perfect but because they were loved; and because they willingly put themselves in harm’s way, at least we believe, not so much for the sake of the UN or other institution, but so that a world could be birthed in which armed conflict and its consequences are more a childhood curiosity than the pervasive threat we now experience in far too many places on this planet.

During this annual honoring, I often find myself wondering what it would be like to sit in a UN conference room and mourn the loss of a child, even a child who long-since “swam away” and might only have acknowledged episodically the place from which their life first arose. I can wonder but simply can’t imagine what it must be like to have the ball “you should not drop,” being dropped instead by a too-often violent and indifferent world.   What do you say in response to that?  Indeed what can anyone else say to narrow this chasm of “missing?”

The UN surely does not honor enough and often not appropriately.   As a community, we are too focused on protocol and position to recognize in the way we should the many who actually uphold the large and small promises that still take up residence in this place. But this Monday ceremony conveyed genuine dignity as well as the insistence that we will collectively, somehow or other, continue to “answer the call” until our yearning for peace, our dream of a war-free world, have finally been realized.

In this age of digital scheduling, I carry around (and actually use) a small paper calendar courtesy of a modest donation I made recently to the remarkable St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Inside that now-scribbled calendar are pictures of children in some cases stricken by cancer even before experiencing the diseases we more commonly associate with childhood. In some of those pictures are the parents, mostly mothers who, like so many others, must find within themselves the means to bear this deep wound, to remain strong and resolute amidst this existential threat to children who, much too often, have not yet learned how to ride a bicycle or tie their shoes.

The reason that we do what we do, despite the ever-apparent absurdity associated with limited resources and even-more-limited wisdom, is because we know that for every mother whose child is given a ray of hope by places like St. Jude’s, millions of others must watch – often helplessly –as violence and disease, hunger and displacement exact their horrible toll.  At the Monday ceremony, several speakers expressed “pride” that so many are still willing to take risks for the sake of global peace. Indeed, more risks will be required of all of us if we are to emerge only semi-scathed from this difficult period in our collective history. But for many of the mothers in the room, I suspect, pride was less in play than wishing for that day when no mother would ever again be required to sit and mourn the loss of her own flesh, the loss of one to whom she once clung tight.

For us and for many others around the world, the possibility of that day makes what we do every day worth our best effort. Blessings to all whom we honor and all who mourn on this Mother’s Day.

Tags: , ,

Accompanied Minors: The Gift of a Mother’s Presence, Dr. Robert Zuber

13 May

Africa

Being a parent wasn’t just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.  Jodi Picoult

The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that – a parent’s heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.  Debra Ginsberg

It’s come at last, she thought, the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.  Betty Smith

It’s not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It’s our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.  L.R. Knost

There is much discussion at the UN on a regular basis focused on the horrible circumstances that some children in this world must endure because of the foolishness of older people much like me.  How do we rationalize, inside and outside of policy communities, the fears and abuses that inflict deep scars on the young and that threaten to make in their adult years people more dependent on care – and less able to give it – than could ever be in our best interest?  What should our response be to children when sometimes cruel and heartless life challenges throw a wet blanket over their capacity to alleviate cruelty for others in their latter parts of their life cycle?

But even more common –perhaps less heartless–circumstances also bring pain and uncertainty for the young – the scraped knees, the verbal intimidations at school, the agony of unrequited desire, the moves away from happy homes to cramped and unfamiliar quarters due to declining economic circumstances.   And then there are the children for whom serious disease or accident threatens to snuff out at least some of the potential of lives that have just barely gotten off the ground.

Some of this might sound a bit like “first world problems,” but it also points to a common experience of so many mothers in this world – to kneel at the foot of the metaphorical cross, as it were, able to accompany the pain of a child’s crucifixion but unable to significantly impact its circumstances.  This accompaniment can be both a great gift and an extraordinary act of courage –easing the necessary and often difficult transitions through the mere grace of presence.

We focus much attention – though probably not enough – on the physical pain and psychic disability that life’s conditions inflict on too many children.  But what of the ones who have committed to bear witness to those lives?  What of the mothers who must engage the eyes of children seeking relief from fear and pain that is beyond their singular capacity to deliver?   Indeed, what of the mothers who can do little but watch in sorrow as the world turns their babies into soldiers, or victims of abuse, or hustlers on unpredictable and even unforgiving streets?

These are the sorts of things I think about when sitting in meetings such as last week’s Security Council Arria Formula discussion intended to review policy progress on ending abuses against children in African states, including and especially their vulnerability to recruitment into such “adult” activities as armed conflict.  Such progress is welcome, of course, as we have clearly not done enough to reassure and protect children from powerful, if metaphorical earthquakes followed by what seem to be for too many, a series of connected aftershocks – the bombing that leads to displacement, that leads to food insecurity, that leads to border hostility and even family separation.

Of course these seismic shifts impact more than just children themselves. What toll do they also take on those parents who seek truly to accompany the lives of these children, who have hopes for their children as we have for ours; who have dreams for their children that they will do well to meet only by fraction?  How do we better support those parents – those mothers – whose hearts have been laid bare through their deep connection with those whom they have born, hearts which are so often in grave danger of being broken in two by the endless shaking of their fragile world?

During the Arria Formula discussion on “action plans” to prevent violence against children, the Netherlands smartly noted the growing disregard for international law that creates the backdrop for so many child abuses, which they then rightly identified as threats to international peace and security.  In the same vein, Sweden (which has been a leading member of the Security Council in calling attention to children’s issues) reminded other members that progress on children’s well-being now will significantly enhance our longer-term efforts to sustain the peace.

Fortunately, as Chad and a few other states noted, we have in fact made some progress on ending child recruitment into the “service” of armed violence, freeing more children from such “service” in both government and non-government forces.  We are also doing a better job at disarming children and reintegrating them into society, providing them with educational and psychological opportunities necessary to growth and healing.  This is all good and hopeful, and many parts of the UN system, including UNICEF, the office for Children and Armed Conflict, and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, should rightly take a bow.

But the circumstances that cause children to plead for comfort and relief from their parents – their mothers – can run far deeper than recruitment.

The accompaniment chosen by so many mothers; a consistent presence through the various stages of child dependency and continuing past the time that we can still deliver those we love from life’s heartaches; this is the special gift and responsibility that we honor on this day.   A commitment by the rest of us to alleviate the miseries of children who must one day assume leadership for our threatened planet is essential for children themselves, but also for those parents– those mothers– who too often are left to suffer in silence the burdens that accrue from a fully exposed heart beholding the pain and longing of children that at times must simply seem too difficult to bear.

More than flowers and cards, more than running a load of laundry and emptying the sink of dishes, many mothers could use a hand – including by all who try to make good policy at places like the United Nations– to do more to calm the tremors that create so much fear and anxiety for so many children, quakes to which those who accompany their journey are compelled to respond but for which there is often no effective or satisfying answer. Today is a good time for all of us to pledge to make a world better fit for children, but especially to honor the mothers who skilfully accompany their young – in all of their joy, pain and anxiety — until that elusive calm is reached.

Tags: , , ,

Shake Shack:  Mothering in an Unpredictable Age, Dr. Robert Zuber

14 May

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it. Mark Twain

My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent. Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Motherhood was the great equalizer for me; I started to identify with everybody… as a mother, you have that impulse to wish that no child should ever be hurt, or abused, or go hungry, or not have opportunities in life.  Annie Lennox

Yesterday on my way to the office I stood on the subway near a seated mother –my guess is she was from somewhere in the Caribbean — and her young son. They were both visibly fatigued – it was early on a rainy and chilly Saturday and the boy was now becoming a bit agitated.  Without saying a word, without apparently being prompted by the son, the mother carefully fashioned a pillow on her lap and then gently coaxed the child to put his head down.  He was asleep within seconds.

Such acts as these, small but consequential, are much of what we honor on a Mother’s Day.  The comforting and feeding, the diapers and disinfectant, the telling of stories and issuing of warnings, the granting of untimely requests and the mediation of endless sibling squabbling, all of this and more in whatever form it takes is necessary for young vulnerable people of need to grow into older vulnerable people of promise.

Much mothering – whether conducted by biological mothers or “other mothers” – is intended in part to create secure and stable family environments, predictability that is still elusive for far too many children, and that now seems mostly to occur (when it does) within individual domiciles.  We know “where things are” in our homes, but in the world at large, peoples and cultures are now being tossed about as though we were living through a perpetual hurricane.

This represents part of the agony for many mothers I know. We can balance our children’s diet, tell them stories, buy them proper clothes and send them off to school, all the while holding our breath, praying hard and crossing our fingers; hoping that the center will hold long enough in these unstable times for our children to have a happy and productive adult life, that our multitude of small acts consistent with concerned parenting will somehow add up to prospects for prosperity and purpose.

But this hope, as it has for mothers across time and space, has one major caveat:  Most of what we teach our children, most of what we long for their future, depends for their fulfillment on a predictable social and security environment.  And whether or not we’ve actually ever had such a thing, we clearly don’t have that now. Despite what too many of our schools and advertisers and technological gurus need us to believe, the veil of predictability has been pulled back in so many ways, revealing a world that is shuddering if not shaking, increasingly fierce motions that are testing the nerves of both parents and the political leadership who now grace (or dis-grace) our halls of state.

Perhaps it is enough for mothers to teach what they know and hope for the best.   Perhaps that is the very best that can be done.  Or perhaps that is simply the recipe for yet another mother’s heartbreak, and another, and more after that.  Perhaps this recipe needs tweaking just a bit.

This week, in a UN building filled to the brim with talented women, three with lofty gravitas made high-profile appearances representing all three of what the UN calls its policy “pillars.” From the human rights and justice pillar was Ms. Fatou Bensouda, Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, who briefed the Security Council on the difficulties in securing prosecutions for crimes in Libya and also met with her “friends” group to discuss ways to eliminate state “non-cooperation” and bring more diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds into the work of the Court. UN Deputy-Secretary General Amina Mohammed, the custodian of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals promises, provided an inspirational message to the “integration segment” of the Economic and Social Council devoted to meeting the “greatest global challenge” of poverty reduction. And on the peace and security front, High Representative of the European Union, Federica Mogherini, addressed the Security Council on the importance of expanding UN-EU security cooperation. Her remarkable presentation included a soft jab at the United States to both abandon its threatened withdrawal from multi-lateral engagements and to “find its own way” regarding commitments to heal our climate-threatened planet.

What all three of these remarkable women had in common this week is their vocal, passionate commitment to ensuring that our collective promises on justice, development and security will be met; that whatever can be done to calm our shaking planet will somehow become our collective priority.

They all have something else in common – they are all mothers.

I don’t know what kind of mothers they are, and I wouldn’t want to assume.  While you wouldn’t always know it from reading UN policy documents, there are thankfully many ways to be a woman, many ways to mother, many ways to nurture and inspire, many ways to mentor. Our pious certainties regarding “what mothers do,” or “what women want and need” can obscure any number of important struggles (and related conversations) on identity and responsibility.

For their part, I suspect that each of these three mothers of distinction has experienced in her own way more than a few moments of anxiety, perhaps even remorse, given that the demands of their high-order positions make absences from their children’s (or grandchildren’s) daily lives all too frequent.  Many professional women feel this, of course, immersed in meetings rather than in bedtime stories, eating on the run while children text that “daddy’s pancakes don’t taste right.”

But there is something about these particular mothers, something compelling about their vocal and pragmatic resolve to make a better world, one fit for all children not only their own.  Despite responsibilities in the world that place restrictions on family time, there remains the expectation — when their growing progeny have gotten some distance from social media addictions and raging hormones — that they will one day be able to look their children square in the eye and let them know that they did all that they knew to do to ensure a more stable, secure and sustainable world in which –collectively–their dreams and choices can continue to matter.

This is a powerful gift that, like inoculations and braces and homework, children might only be able to appreciate fully when they are old enough – and fortunate enough – to bear children of their own. There are no Hallmark cards devoted to mothers who help “stop the shaking.”  Perhaps there needs to be.

The many young people of diverse backgrounds who pass through our office each year have an eerily similar take on the world they are soon to inherit.  When I ask them if they feel prepared for all the chaotic motion characteristic of this current planetary phase, they almost always and without hesitation respond “no.”  It is difficult to know to what extent this is in response to the diverse threats they experience with us at the UN on a daily basis – wars and rumors of wars, climate change and our often tepid responses, traumatized children and families on makeshift rafts or reeling from the effects of famine. But it is unsettling that after so much parenting and so much schooling, even children of privilege feel inadequate to act on a stage that feels perpetually unsteady.

Also on this dreary New York weekend, I had a long Skype chat with a former colleague struggling in Mexico with the manifold contemporary responsibilities of being a mother – meeting her daughters’ needs, comforting their wounds and guiding their preparation for life outside the home while contributing in a larger sense to the stability of a world in which her parenting can hopefully have some impact.  Thankfully, she is finding that way, not on a global stage like Mohammed or Bensouda perhaps, but in community settings that matter and in ways that communicate – to both her children and the wider society – that there is still a sound basis for hope in our common future.

And like these three women of international prominence, the commitments of my former colleague will allow her one day to look her daughters in the eye and let them know that she also did her part – beyond the packed lunches and bandaging of scraped knees — to secure an unsteady planet.

Tags: , , ,