Once Again, To Mama, With Love

May 3rd, 2011 | Shonali Burke | 11 Comments

For Mother’s Day last year,

I didn’t buy my mother an expensive gift, or take her out to dinner, or do any of the things that would, no doubt, make a lot of marketers and companies happy.

(That’s her, on the right. Ain’t she pretty?!)

It’s not that I didn’t want to do them. I would have loved to have been able to spend some one-on-one time with my mom, for example.

But those things are a little tough to do when one is halfway across the world from one’s mother. Except the expensive gift part, which I could no doubt have bought and FedExed to her.

But I wasn’t particularly flush with funds last year. And what my mother values more than anything, while she does like “stuff” (let’s admit it, most of us do), is knowing her kids are healthy and happy, and that they love her.

I usually talk to my mother every weekend via Skype (yes, to my dad as well, I’m not mean!), and it makes a huge difference to me to be able to see her face.

Filed under Events, Personal, Shonali Burke, Social Media | Tags: changemakers, epic change, mama lucy, mother's day, stacey monk, to mama with love | Comments (11)

To Mama, With Love

May 9th, 2010 | Shonali Burke | 1 Comment

With all the noise leading up to Mother’s Day, it was interesting to learn (to me, at least) that it’s not really a Hallmark holiday. At least, that’s not how it started.

White carnations

A certain Anna Jarvis, who hailed from Webster, W. Va., created the holiday as we know it in memory of her mother, though there are several historical precedents to honoring one’s mother.

She was initially laughed at, ridiculed and generally mocked, but she persevered and the day became a reality in 1914.

Old Anna was not happy with how her homage to her mother turned out. (She wanted people to give their mothers white carnations to wear.)

Image: Clyde Robinson, Creative Commons