The Revolutionary Roots of Mother’s Day
- Ashley Tamburello
- 20 hours ago
- 2 min read
This past weekend, Mother's Day* may have been marked with flowers, cards, and gestures of gratitude, but it was not always a sentimental celebration. Its origins lie in a far more radical history of women, peace, and collective action.
*Don't panic UK readers, I'm an American mother based in the UK. Last year we happened to be in Costa Rica for their Mother's Day in August, so I ended up celebrating three Mother's Days. I highly recommend.
In the United States, Mother's Day began not as a commercial tradition, but as a call for peace. In the aftermath of the American Civil War, writer and activist Julia Ward Howe proposed a "Mother's Day for Peace," believing women had a role to play in resisting violence and rebuilding a fractured society. Later, activist Anna Jarvis, who helped establish Mother's Day as a national day of recognition, carried the movement forward, creating spaces for remembrance and connection during a time of deep and ongoing grief.
Though their approaches differed, both women pointed towards something that feels urgently relevant today: that care, cooperation, and responsibility to future generations are not soft values, but essential foundations for how we live and lead. These are not new ideas; they are ancient ones, alive and practised in cultures around the world.
Across many matrilineal and matriarchal cultures, similar principles continue to shape community life. Contrary to common misconceptions, matriarchy is not about women dominating men. In many of these societies, leadership is rooted in relationships, shared responsibility, consensus, and care for both people and Nature. Community wellbeing is prioritised alongside ecological balance, and decisions are often made with future generations in mind.
Here at TreeSisters, we have had the privilege of witnessing what becomes possible when restoration is rooted in this kind of relational thinking. Women's leadership sits at the heart of our theory of change, not as an abstract idea, but as a lived reality across nearly 12 years of projects and the communities we work alongside. Forests and ecosystems begin to regenerate. Wildlife and biodiversity return. Water systems recover. And woven through all of it, communities strengthen through economic independence, education, leadership development, and regenerative livelihoods.
This is not simply about planting trees. It is about restoring relationship: between people, place, and the living world around us. It is about recognising that ecological restoration and community wellbeing are deeply interconnected, and that lasting change grows from approaches grounded in cooperation, reciprocity, and care.
At a time when ecosystems are under immense pressure and communities around the world face growing uncertainty, perhaps the qualities we most need are the very ones Julia Ward Howe and Anna Jarvis recognised all those years ago: the ability to gather, to care, to resist what harms life, and to shape a future rooted in connection rather than extraction.
Happy belated Mother's Day to all the mothers, aunties, grandmothers, and those who mother in ways the world doesn't always name.
