05/12/2026
I feel closest to my mom like this, ratty old tennies, covered in dirt and working. A few days late for Mother’s Day, but was thinking about the origins of the Day, a call to Peace by Mothers, and my mom in particular, in whom this call was strong.
In 1870, abolitionist, suffragist, and anti-war activist Julia Ward Howe wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation, calling on women across the world to organize against war and the destruction of human life; envisioning an international day of resistance to militarism, violence, and political indifference.
She wrote:
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies…We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, Disarm!”
My mother, Betsy Belmont, when, in the wake of 9/11 my senior year in high school and the imminent war with Iraq, saw the military recruiters descend upon our small, rural, lower socioeconomic school to buy souls for the war machine’s maw, did something. She would show up to school for the lunch break, and any time that recruiters were present, with a table of information on scholarships and other job opportunities. Legally she could be there anytime that recruiters were present, and so she was.
My mom lived what it is to care for a community and all of its children as if your own. Grateful for the road map of values and morals she handed down.
Thank you Betsy, for being the light I needed before I ever knew what my life had in store. And for showing us that hard work done by hand and in service to all is a noble way to live.