EDITORIAL: Best wishes on Mother’s Day from the Derry Journal

Mother’s Day may nominally be a chance to present gifts and tokens of affection to our mothers but it is worth recognising that aunts, wives, big sisters, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, cousins, guardians and family friends also play a vital role in raising children.

That’s particularly the case here in Ireland where families traditionally tended to be large and close knit and where there is still today a strong sense of community. The old saying, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ still rings true here.

For some this weekend will be bitter sweet. Anyone who has ever lost a parent will know that the fond memories Mother’s Day or Father’s Day evoke are tinged with sadness.

The fact that so many will be honouring the memory of their mothers or the significant women in their lives by visiting their graves this weekend is testament to how those bonds forged in life stay with us long after someone has passed on.

For generations locally, mothers had to go out and work in shirt factories and other industries as employment for men was often hard to come by and temporary.

Those women held down jobs, raised families on meagre means and forged strong networks among themselves. They were then, as they are today, the bedrock of our communities. Many have led from the front on demanding civil rights and in fighting for equality for all our sakes.

Although often denied positions of power or the top jobs, they have been leaders inside and outside their homes and their jobs, educators who taught us how to walk, talk, showed us right from wrong, put up with us in our adolescence, prepared us for adulthood and shaped us into the people we have become. We owe them all a great debt of gratitude.

And so to all of those mentioned above, best wishes this Mother’s Day and for the year ahead.