We’ve got a great new Giving Tee coming out in a few weeks. It benefits a charity called True Child which works to create safer environments for kids to be themselves.

$5 From the Sale of Each Tee goes to True Child

Every day, 160,000 kids stay home from school. Not because they’re sick or forgot to do their homework, but because they are afraid . . . afraid of being bullied. Kids who are bullied are generally identified by their peers as “different” and this is the root issue. If we teach kids from a young age that being different is ok, COOL even, then we can dismantle the bullying process. There will always be kids and adults who want to exert control over those who are weaker but if we can make spaces in school for kids to be their true, unique selves, then we can surely diminish the loneliness for kids who march to the beat of their own drummer. And most optimistically, if we can make being different cool, then we are well on our way to making our entire world a better place because the truth is, we are all different. We are all unique, but from a young age, may of us are taught to hide our true colors and follow the herd. What a shame. As the luminous Judy Garland once said, “Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.”

So it turns out, Mother’s Day was a British holiday that the Puritans ditched when they hit the North American shore. They thought all holidays were sort of indulgent, of course, and since women weren’t really top of the totem pole, this one didn’t make the boat ride. This all changed in 1870 when an amazing woman named Julia Ward Howe, who also wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” used the holiday as a way to raise awareness of the atrocities of the Civil War. She called on Mother’s to come together and protest what she saw as the futility of their Sons killing the Sons of other Mothers.

She wrote the “The Mothers’ Day Proclomation of 1870″ and I’m pretty sure after you read it, you’ll be inspired but also a little annoyed that this origins story isn’t more prominent in our discussions of Mother’s Day today:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:

In the name of womanhood and 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.

Thanks to Jarod Jones for pointing this out - as a Women’s Studies Major, I am particularly unnerved never to have heard this narrative. What a shame that even academic institutions do not give this woman and her incredible proclamation their due.