Happy or Alarmed: Mother's Day 2025

 Everyone had a mother, so it's really the only universally experienced relationship. And both mothers themselves and the holiday today can conjure either gratitude or grief, or most likely some of both. In our church this morning the woman who led the prayer time did a solid job of celebrating the act of mothering, the women in our lives who bring life to the world both biologically and metaphorically. But she also recognized the pain many (most) carry from being hurt to some degree by the crucial mothers in our life, or the grief of motherhood denied or motherhood wounded by loss. It's messy. 

Because real world love IS messy. 

Two moms now (above) and then (below)

With Nola, my paternal grandma

My maternal grandmother Winnie died when my mom was 21

My grandmothers  and mother and mother-in-law worked hard to create home out of the materials they were given, to raise children who were nourished with support and love. They all outlived husbands and they all worked to provide and they all delighted mostly in reunions with family, in cheering on the next generation or two or three. If I had to distill the nectar of what they passed on to me, it might be loyalty. A determination to put their kids' well being into the priority place, to truly believe that mattered more than any other accolade.

Because mothers are primarily an ally in the mess of the real world.

And fighting for the well-being of children has become more difficult in 2025. In my 37 years since graduating from medical school, childhood deaths have decreased by more than half (60% decline from 13 million to 4.8 million a year, even though there are more kids), and "mortality ratios" of deaths/births have decreased similarly from a global 10% dying to about 3.5% (and a measure of Bundibugyo's suffering and reason to locate there as a pediatrician, their ratio was over 30%, some estimates close to 50% all that time ago). We mothers have celebrated better access to safe deliveries, to family planning, to adequate food, to immunizations, to education, to treamtents for malaria and diarrhea and TB and HIV. It matters. None of us anticipated that Mother's Day 2025 would find us reading this week's medical journals with concern that that progress would stall, and mortality would reverse it's fall and begin to climb.

The medical journal Lancet using massive amounts of data estimated that because of America's withdrawal this year from our commitment to fund "PEPFAR", a long-standing public health initiative, a million more kids would be infected with HIV, a half a million more would die, and almost three million more would be orphaned in the next five years. Most of that impact will be felt in Africa, our other home. Most of the people affected will be people we know and love, people who are sending me "Happy Mother's Day" texts.

The New England Journal of Medicine wrote "The Trump administration’s gutting of USAID and other foreign-assistance programs marks a break from decades of evidence-based practices that have improved lives throughout the world. In addition to pushing millions of people into poverty and leading to an estimated 160,000 or more avoidable child deaths each year, these reforms will undermine health and the economy in the United States."  The Journal Nature estimated USAID cuts would cost the world 25 million lives.

Mother's Day 2025 is a day to resolve to align our hearts with mothers. My mother aligned hers to ensure my survival and my capacity to care about the world. Because of the women on both sides of our family, I have children of the body and heart both, those that I birthed and many more that have been part of our life. I am so delighted by talking on a family face-time with a handful of them today, and receiving greeting texts from across the world wishing my happy Mother's Day. 

Let us continue to work and pray for mothers everywhere, and their children.

Above and below, goodbye for now to some of our Ugandan kids

My early Mother's Day gift was a week visit from Julia, who brought cheer and capacity to see us through this strenuous course of treatment.

This is what most visits with kids look like now from our call today. . . 

And I enjoyed the peonies in our host home in Baltimore as my Mother's Day flowers!