To the Flame Bearers – A Mother’s Day for All Who Tend Life

What do we say on Mother’s Day
to the ones who have mothered in ways the world doesn’t always see?

To those who never bore a child but have borne the unbearable—
grief, loss, silence, injustice—and still chosen to love.

To the ones who stayed up all night holding a trembling animal,
or sang over seeds planted in garden beds like prayers in the soil.

To the ones who have sat vigil at deathbeds,
gently anointing foreheads, whispering permission to let go.

To the ones who stirred soup for a neighbor,
rocked a friend’s newborn so she could shower,
or offered their lap to a weeping stranger in a grocery store.

To the ones who never stopped praying,
even when the church doors were locked
and the candles were snuffed out.

To the ones who raised baby chicks, goats, and dreams
on small plots of land that bloomed because they believed.

To the women who had to become mothers to themselves
because no one else ever did.
To the ones who forgave anyway. Who stayed soft. Who stayed sacred.
Even when it cost them everything.

Today, we do not reduce the feminine to biology.
We do not equate worth with wombs.
We honor the full spectrum of feminine tending,
in all its fierce, messy, radiant forms.

Because to mother is to carry life—not just in the body,
but in the heart, in the breath, in the unspoken knowing
that everything is connected and everything deserves care.

So to you—the flame bearer, the soul nurturer, the keeper of the sacred—
we see you.

Whether you are celebrated today or forgotten by greeting cards and brunch menus,
know this:

You are the altar.
You are the offering.
You are the divine feminine,
and the world rises because you continue to rise.