The expression “never two without three” makes a lot of sense when it comes to my experience of Mother’s Day.
Is that for the third time, I will celebrate my motherhood standing on my two tired legs. On May 14, I will stand straight and proud before the National Assembly to fight for my rights and those of my son. I won’t be in front of the cameras or in front of the stage, I’ll be with the path that works. I will be with the current of the river that descends to the sea.
We are thousands like me.
Last year, nearly 10,000 of us straightened our summits and spread our interconnected roots.
We fight for our children to have the right to a decent present, free from poverty and violence. We are also fighting to make their future possible, safe from catastrophes and climatic cataclysms. We fight for them and adopt the posture of the mother bear who protects her cubs. The posture of the mother wolves who defend their pack against the dangers that await them. We protect those we give birth to.
But it would be lying to you not to say that we are also fighting for our women’s rights, these rights that we see dangerously retreating in Quebec and everywhere else.
When I launched the #MaPlaceAuTravail movement in March 2021, I did not yet realize the extent of the anger lodged in the pit of my stomach. This anger born of an immense feeling of helplessness: not being able to return to work and thus give up a career that I love. My friends and I realized that the rights our mothers and grandmothers had fought for were being compromised and no one was standing in the streets to speak out against it.
Anger spoke, instinctively. An anger of the heart that comes from the love I have for my son, for my sisters in battle and also for myself.
I have often been told that anger burns, hurts, destroys and inflames. It is rage that is in question here.
Me, I speak to you about the anger which carries, resounds, gathers and embraces.
I’m talking to you about the anger of mothers who feel threatened.
At a time when everything divides us, I tell myself that if there is one thing that unites all human beings, it is the fact of having been carried by a mother.
On Mother’s Day, I therefore invite you to support those who are giving birth and who cannot sit down in front of the necessary observations. I therefore invite you to come walk with us in Quebec City, for our rights, those of our children and future generations. So that next year all mothers like me can finally sit down and rest without fear.
Maternally in crisis,