On Mothers’ Day and the Louis D. Brown Walk for Peace, let’s remember how the first Mothers’ Day began. Rather than a day to give gifts to our mothers, the day calledl for women organize and speak out for peace and justice around the world.

Julia Ward Howe, who wrote "Battle Hymn of the Republic," first imagined a “Mothers Day.” Her call, in 1870, after witnessing the brutality and pain of the Civil War, was to urge women to act for peace. She wanted women to come together across national lines, to recognize what women hold in common above what divides them, and commit to finding peaceful resolutions to conflicts. As she wrote:

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn

All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We, the women of one country,

Will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

If we want to truly celebrate and honor women, we would do well to draw on the sentiments that led to the establishment of such a day—that all women are valuable, that women on various sides of political issues or on various sides of a border have more in common than they hold in differences. Such sentiments are core to the success of the annual Walk for Peace, and sadly relevant as war rages in Ukraine.