05/10/2026
[alt text: a swirly, colorful image with stars and planets with center text that says "We celebrate all people doing the work of mothering." Surrounding this are the words "parents, care workers, care collectives, mutual aid organizers, House mothers, siblings, aunties, godparents, grandparents, chosen families, domestic workers, care webs, single moms, step-parents & many more!"]
Today we are celebrating mothering beyond birthing and legally defined parenting. Mothering is, as Alexis Pauline Gumbs writes in Revolutionary Mothering, "the practice of creating, nurturing, affirming, and supporting life."
Gumbs prompts us to consider "What would it mean for us to take the word “mother” less as a gendered identity and more as a possible action, a technology of transformation that those people who do the most mothering labor are teaching us right now?"
We also recognize that the work of mothering often falls to women and q***r folks of color in U.S. society. And most of these people mother with very little support, and some with active repression by the state via the family policing system, prison system, and the medical industrial complex.
May we hold all of the people separated from their loved ones because of carceral systems of family separation.
May we also hold all who are not mothering by choice, those who are grieving their mothers, those who are grieving children lost, and those who are estranged from their mothers or caregivers.
Today, let’s ask ourselves...
how can we better support those mothering in our communities?
in what ways can we tend to the life around us?
how can we mother the future we want to see?
'day2026