Founder Letter: The Original Gift

A Mother’s Day Meditation: The Original Gift

Before there were markets, there was milk. Before care was measured and metered and transacted, it was given and received worldlessly, generously, constantly, in the deep dark and at all times of day. Philosopher Genevieve Vaughan names this the maternal gift economy—a way of living where it is needs that call forth care, not worthiness.

On this day, we honor individual mothers, and the mothering or nurturing instincy, as well as the deeper structure of life that they reveal. The biological, emotional and ecologica ground beneath every breath we take. Someone gave of their body so another could live. This logic—of giving without demand—is not just human. It’s the logic of the seed, the soil, the forest.

Vandana Shiva calls attention to this same principle in nature. She speaks of the creative force in nature, which continues to nurture life even under pressure. In her work on seed sovereignty, she shows how monoculture and commodification have severed us from the living systems that once sustained us. But the earth, like the mother, gives anyway.

The great Joanna Macy in her work on the Great Turning also invites us to reconnect with the web of life—to feel, again, the pain of separation and the joy of remembering our place within the whole. 

This isn't about idealizing motherhood, or romanticizing care. Many caregivers are exhausted, unseen, unsupported. But the impulse to give—the quiet instinct to move toward what needs tending—is still alive. It lives in the garden, in the kitchen, in the healing circle, in the hospice bed, in the way we show up for one another even when the systems around us forget how.

So today, we are honoring this original gift, the bodies that fed us and feed us still, the earth that holds us, the people who give from a deeper source.

We all know this essential thing: that life is relationship. With air and people and planet. We are not separate. That what we do to one, we do to all. So to those who have given so another could grow—thank you.

Thank you, Ma.

Love,

Christine 

& Your Rosebud Team