Dear Mother (Earth)
A love letter to the ultimate Mother this Mother's Day
Dear Mother,
We have taken so much from you without ever really learning how to say thank you or learning how to tell you that we love you.
You have fed us, carried us, sheltered us, and asked for very little in return except for care, balance, and respect, yet we have treated your generosity like an endless (infinite) resource instead of the precious miracle that it really is. We have drilled into your skin, poisoned your waters, cut down your forests, and filled your air with the consequences of our own hunger and greed, all while expecting you to continue holding and supporting us gently through it.
And somehow, you still manage to do so.
We are still gifted the return of spring after brutal winters. You still let flowers push through cracked sidewalks and the roots of trees find their way to sunlight. We are still offered oceans that calm us, trees that shade us and sunsets that stop us in our tracks long enough to remember that there are things more important than productivity and profit.
There is something heartbreaking about the fact that even now, in the middle of all this damage, you remain beautiful.
I think many of us are grieving you in ways we do not always know how to explain or fully understand. We feel it in the heat of the summers, in the smoke-filled skies, in the storms that arrive harder and stranger than before. We feel it in the profound fear that future generations may inherit a world less stable, less abundant, less alive than the one you gave us and entrust to us every day.
But grief is another form of love, and perhaps that is why so many of us cannot look away anymore.
This Mother’s Day, I do not want to celebrate you with empty words or greenwashed promises. I just want to say that some of us are trying to remember how to belong to you again instead of simply just using and mistreating you. We are trying to move slower, consume less, waste less and notice more. Some of us are trying to rebuild the rich relationship we once had with you.
You have always been more than a backdrop to human life. You are the one reason life exists at all.
And despite everything, you are still here, carrying us through our worst mistakes with more patience than we have ever deserved.
I hope we learn to deserve you someday.
