What can you do for the mothers on the margins?

Mothers are like vessels. They are the containers that carry, grow and feed us. They pour into us unconditionally. But it seems we’ve depleted them for far too long or forgotten them as a source of life and love.

This is why it feels like we can never find the right gifts for moms. Cards, flowers and chocolates fall short. It’s because the emotional, physical and mental labor mothers do for our families and communities does not compare to material gifts.

This Mother’s Day is a perfect time to replenish them with action. It’s time we recognize the mothers we have forgotten. Especially the mothers at the margins who deserve more action from us all because we’ve failed them as a society.

First are the moms who will experience this day with the deep absence of one of their beloveds. Just here in Denver, I think of mothers whose children have been taken by deadly violence.

Sonia Laura Hernandez and her child Jessie Hernandez. April Sanchez and her son Ryan Ronquillo. Lynne Eaglefeather, whose son Paul Castaway isn’t here to check on her during this pandemic.

In Georgia, Wanda Cooper Jones grieves her son Ahmaud Arbery, who was killed for jogging while black. He would have turned 26 years old on May 8. This weekend his family celebrated both Mother’s Day and his birthday.

What about the countless mothers who will look across their children’s faces and recall the near-misses? Flashbacks of dressing their wounds with prayers dripping from their mouths, keeping the “what-ifs” at bay.

How about the women impacted by violence themselves? Mothers who’ve survived intimate partner violence, and those who could have been mothers. Like so many murdered and missing indigenous women and girls.

This includes transwomen who have been murdered and robbed of being mothers and daughters. Women like Angie Zapata, who would have been 30 years old if she hadn’t been brutally killed in 2008. It’s been 12 years since the Zapata family has endured Mother’s Day without her smile.

Today, we must remember mothers who are incarcerated or detained and separated from their families. Those who instead of holding onto the warm bodies of their loved ones, grasp cold bars.

We remember disabled mothers who, instead of receiving support, the courts have taken their children into custody. And mothers who struggle with addictions and those experiencing homelessness. We remember foster and adoptive moms who give shelter and love, turning strangers into family.

Mothers who have had miscarriages. Mothers who are infertile and dream of children. And mothers who make the decision to abort. Mothers who survive difficult births and those that don’t because of implicit biases in the medical system.

The mothers who are nurses and health care workers. And mothers who have died during this pandemic. We remember them too.

Mothers who are single, juggling two jobs and parenting idle anxious children at home. Mothers who have to choose between caring for sick family members or keeping their jobs.

Mothers who are gender nonbinary.

Mothers who are creatives, healers and educators whose children are laborious projects, lesson plans and other people’s birth children. Moms that have hundreds of students they affectionately call their kids. Like Sam Varra, a science and language arts teacher I had once who juggled graduate school and taught us fungi jokes.

And the mother we all share, mother earth. This year she’s receiving a global rest, her skies and waters are clearing even momentarily.

This isn’t an over-victimization of mothers. The attempt here is for us all to take note of how we are implicit in the violence that occurs to mothers. The acute and chronic trauma enacted on the bodies and psyches of the people who mother and are caregivers.

This chronic trauma comes from the devaluing, silencing and minimizing of the emotional and physical labor they provide.

Let us support mothers by taking on chores, work and labor defaulted to them not just today but always. Let’s support legislation that centers the needs of mothers including worker protections and autonomy of their medical decisions.

Let’s pour back into mothers with our actions, not with material gifts for one day.

Waffles and flowers on Sunday morning are great. But a commitment to dismantle imbalances of gender roles is the gift all mothers deserve.

Mimi Madrid is a Denver-raised writer who works as a communications content writer at a non-profit providing nursing care for new mothers and has worked in nonprofits serving youth, LGBTQ survivors of violence and Latinx communities.