J A Graham

Here’s day one thousand and twenty seven of our mobile photography/art Pic of the Day section via Instagram. Each day we select one image a day for our Pic of the Day section on Instagram, with this hashtag #theappwhisperer.

To ensure your image receives our attention, please upload it to Instagram with this hashtag #theappwhisperer.

Today, we congratulate @ja__graham – Jennifer with this image entitled “No one is more sentimentalised …than mothers on Mother’s Day…but Mother’s Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path. Ha! Every woman’s path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is, sadly, true. An unhealthy mother’s love is withering.

The illusion is that mothers are automatically happier, more fulfilled and complete. But some of the craziest, grimmest people this Sunday will be the mothers themselves, stuck herding their own mothers and weeping children and husbands’ mothers into seats at restaurants.

I hate the way the holiday makes all non-mothers, and the daughters of dead mothers, and the mothers of dead or severely damaged children, feel the deepest kind of grief and failure. The non-mothers must sit in their churches, temples, mosques, recovery rooms and pretend to feel good about the day while they are excluded from a holiday that benefits no one but Hallmark and See’s. There is no refuge — not at the horse races, movies, malls, museums. Even the turn-off-your-cellphone announcer is going to open by saying, “Happy Mother’s Day!” You could always hide in a nice seedy bar, I suppose…

Mothering has been the richest experience of my life, but I am still opposed to Mother’s Day. It perpetuates the dangerous idea that all parents are somehow superior to non-parents. Meanwhile, we know the worst, skeeviest, most evil people in the world are CEOs and politicians who are proud parents.” ~ Anne Lamott, Why I hate Mother’s Day

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