What the World Needs Now...
Is (Mother) Love
I’m convinced mother love is one of the most powerful forces in the world.
When my son was a toddler, he disappeared at the zoo after going down a slide that spit him out beyond the range of my vision. By the time I made it to the bottom of the slide, he was nowhere to be found. Immediately, my heart began pounding as I looked for him, my eyes scanning everywhere for the sight of my boy.
No sign of him anywhere, I began frantically calling his name, working my way through the crowds of people, dread and panic building with every passing second.
“Caleb!” I screamed, over and over.
No answer. No boy.
There’s no worse feeling than helplessness as a parent. When our children are in danger, we are meant to be the ones to help them. We’re the ones they look to for rescue and aid. And when we’re unable to get help to them, it feels like a sort of death because of how primal that instinct is within us.
As I called out again and again for my son, tears flowing freely as I struggled to catch my breath, I began to hear his name echoed to my right and to my left.
“Caleb!” a woman called out, scanning the area too.
“Caleb!” another woman’s voice came from behind me.
Soon we were a choir, female voices from all over calling out for one person – my baby boy.
I realized every single woman around me had stopped what she was doing and had begun looking for my child. No questions asked, no details needed. They saw a mama in distress, deduced that her child was at risk, and began searching all over.
They spread out everywhere, looking under equipment, in foliage, asking passersby if they’d seen a boy alone, going into restrooms, leaving no area un-searched.
Eventually he was found, toddling about unaware of the panic and mayhem he’d caused for those few terrifying moments.
Relief is a weak description of what I felt holding him in my arms again, but I felt something else too.
I felt deep solidarity with the women around me, and overwhelming gratitude for their fierce and protective love – even for a stranger who they knew nothing about.
Men, with their strong bodies and large frames, are often considered our protectors. We’ve historically sent them out to battlefields and frontlines to shield us all from collective harm. But, in my life, I’ve witnessed women fiercely protecting the vulnerable just as often.
Women are our first protectors, carrying us in their wombs, nourishing our lives with their own blood and bone. When we are at our most vulnerable, it is women who feed us, hold us, and shield us from harm even to their own detriment.
Even God entrusted Godself to a woman – allowing Divine Love to be nourished, held, fed, and protected by the only warrior who could do that monumental job.
Every time I’ve needed real help – the life-saving kind – I’ve turned to the women in my circle because I know they will shield me, protect me, and defend me and mine when we’re vulnerable. Even if it means putting themselves on the line, they will stand with those they love in their time of need. And I don’t think it’s because women are better than men or more loving. I think it’s because women know what it’s like to be the vulnerable ones and their experiences create a powerful empathy that leads to action.
I’ve thought about that fierce mother love many times in the past few months as I’ve watched one vulnerable group after another be knocked down for the purpose of political theater. And I’ve wondered when the mamas are going to have enough of this nonsense and take to the streets to stand with those who need our help?
The problem seems to be that we may be too blinded by political propaganda to recognize that the most vulnerable in our society (and world) are not our enemies but have become convenient scapegoats for use by those in power on both sides of the aisle.
I watched with deep disappointment Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R – South Carolina) use a slur numerous times against transgender people during a House hearing, and then again when reading about her and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R- Colorado) storming into a bathroom and accusing a cisgendered woman of being trans. Later, they had to apologize, though their words must have rung hollow after they had involved security and demanded to see “proof” she was female. This entire incident in which a woman was accosted and accused while simply using the restroom was witnessed and written about by reporters. And it flies in the face of the very thing Nancy Mace says she stands for – women’s rights to safety.
When I later read about Nancy Mace taking up time on the House floor to reveal sexual assault allegations against several men, I thought about mothering love again. She talked about her life as a survivor and condemned the cowardice and inaction of those who were supposed to protect her – all of them cisgendered men. Nancy Mace both needed protection from sexual assault and, ironically, is in a lawmaking position in which she should be providing protection to others from sexual assault. Yet, instead of galvanizing her passion and position to do something substantial for women, she is leading a witch hunt against a small and vulnerable group in our country.
The truth is that Nancy Mace, and all biological females in this country, share much in common with the transgender population as both groups are often survivors of sexual violence. Indeed, transgender people suffer sexual violence at a much higher rate than biological women. The rate of violent victimization against transgender persons (51.5 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 16 or older) was 2.5 times the rate among cisgender persons (20.5 per 1,000). These human beings know what it’s like to be preyed upon, violated, and degraded too. They want safety for themselves when they are in vulnerable and intimate situations, such as restrooms, just like biological women do.
Nancy Mace shares damnable common ground with the very people she is vilifying and mocking. She is using her own pain and the pain of others who make up less than one percent of our country’s population for political theater. Meanwhile, the actual people women need protection from, overwhelmingly, are cisgender men. A whopping 93% of sexual offenders in America are men, and an infinitesimal number are transgender. Most transgender people are simply trying to survive. They experience significantly higher rates of mental health issues – including suicide – than that of the general population. And since they’ve been made the political scapegoat in our country, they live in fear for their safety every day of their lives.
There are so few trans people in this country – and worldwide – that most of us don’t know a single transgender person at all. And perhaps that’s the problem. Lack of proximity to transgender folks helps us stay insulated from their pain, their joy, their complexities, and their humanity. It’s hard to have empathy or to allow our fierce and protective mothering love to flourish when they are less than human beings in our eyes, or especially when we’ve been conditioned to believe that they are monsters who may be out to hurt our own children and those we love. Despite the cold, hard fact that women and girls are exponentially more in danger of cisgender men, our protective mothering love is played upon by rumors, myths, and propaganda that transgender people are a threat.
And why is that?
Simply this: if women believe that a vulnerable person is in harm’s way and in need of protection – watch out! If the switch to our powerful mothering love is flipped, we will shut the world down to get in between the weaker ones and the dark powers that are coming against them. Everyone knows this, especially those in charge of creating propaganda to sell us things, convince us of things, and manipulate us.
There’s a reason calls for empathy and mercy have recently been termed “sinful” and “toxic.” The powerful don’t want forces like empathy and mercy to get out of hand because they always prove damaging to systems of domination.
Nancy Mace would serve women and girls better by using her power and resources to come against the real sexual predators who are targeting women and girls online, at church, and on college campuses. She would do better by taking her righteous fight to the foundations of our systems that allow misogyny and sexual perversion to thrive, but the distraction of attacking a marginalized group aggressively only weakens the real energy we all should be directing elsewhere.
If we’re looking for real solutions to real threats against people in bathrooms, it’s obvious where we need to focus – protecting girls, women, boys, and transgender people from violent cisgender men. Consider this: the real people Nancy Mace and others fear aren’t trans but are cisgender men pretending to be. If we want to protect those in our charge, we start there, not at some imaginary threat created by clever propagandists.
Yet, there’s more for the mamas to do here.
Because mother love doesn’t just stop at the people who belong to us, it branches out and covers the world, imitating the mothering love of God for all humankind. Just like the women at the zoo who stopped what they were doing and directed their energy and resources to helping me – a stranger in need – we all must do the same for the vulnerable people around us. We can have our opinions and debates on trans people in women’s sports, our religious viewpoints about how God created humankind with binary gender distinctions, our concerns about gender affirming care for kids, and even our limits on who should be allowed to use what bathrooms.
But what mothering love requires is that while we are doing our best to protect one group of vulnerable people, we do the best we can to protect all groups of vulnerable people. Mothering love doesn’t allow the small-minded and power-hungry to dictate who gets to be protected and valued. It never capitulates to bullies, or stands in opposition to those who cannot defend themselves.
Mothering love always remembers that trans folks – as well as undocumented immigrants, Ukrainians, Israelis, Palestinians, and every other group on the planet -- are some other mamas’ babies and, right now, they’re being unfairly targeted politically, legally, and socially. They need us to find solutions that work for everyone and to demand that they get to live in freedom and safety. When clear-eyed mamas gaze into the faces of those suffering – no matter how challenging it is to look at them because they don’t fit into our comfortable categories – we experience a deep empathy that leads to action.
YES!!! Thank you for articulating this so powerfully and beautifully, friend! One of the things I'm taking away from what you shared is the importance of connecting to and listening to our hearts. 💓
Whew. I’m misty reading this. And I’m in. ❤️