Mother’s Day Not Just for Mothers, Feminist Says : Santa Ana woman encourages seminar participants to honor those special people who have ‘mothered’ and nurtured them in their lives.

If Mother’s Day isn’t a Hallmark holiday in your life, cheer up. Chances are you have a reason to celebrate--and be celebrated--that hasn’t even occurred to you or your loved ones.

So instead of feeling left out while families all around you honor their matriarchs this Sunday, think about what psychoanalyst Jean Shinoda Bolen says about motherhood in her book, “Goddesses in Everywoman.”

In a passage about Demeter, the deeply maternal Greek goddess of grain who cut off the world’s food supply until her kidnapped daughter was returned to her, Bolen writes: “Demeter’s maternal instinct is not restricted to being a biological mother or to nurturing only her own children.”

On the contrary, Demeter held the power to nurture the universe. And, according to Bolen, her spirit is within a lot of women who don’t have children but still do a lot of mothering for people of all ages.

She explains: “Some naturally provide tangible food and care, some provide emotional and psychological support, while others give spiritual nourishment.”

The Demeter types who may be overlooked this Sunday were the focus of a recent talk, titled “A Feminist’s Reflection on Mother’s Day,” at Cal State Fullerton.

Lorraine Blair, a 48-year-old Santa Ana resident who has a bachelor’s degree in home economics and a master’s in sociology, told a small group sitting in an intimate circle at the Women’s Center: “Some of the people who were most mothering to me never had kids of their own. There are a lot of people who have mothered us who aren’t honored on Mother’s Day.”

Blair has made her own card to make sure those special people in her life don’t feel forgotten. It’s blank on the inside, and the message on the front says, “It’s nearly time for ‘Mothering Day’ and I thought of you because. . . . “

Blair asked the participants in her seminar to think about the people in their past to whom they might send such a card. “Start with your childhood,” she told them, “and remember someone who could see a seed of something special inside you and helped you nourish that seed and make it grow.”

Then, she continued, think of someone who made you feel anchored during those turbulent teen years--”someone who helped you put life in perspective and gave you the feeling that you were a very important person with lots of potential.”

And finally, Blair asked the group to recall someone who has supported them when, as adults, they have wanted to scream, “Stop the world--I want to get off!”

“This is someone who makes you feel yourself again, who puts a soothing arm around you and makes you feel it’s going to be OK.”

Blair--who owns a business that provides music, dance and art programs for private schools--has special memories of a woman in her neighborhood when she was growing up who drew out her artistic side by involving her in arts and crafts projects.

Those who attended her talk recalled some men as well as women who have nurtured them.

Said one woman:”My first mother was my father. We used to cry together when we watched old movies. It was easier to show emotions around him than with my mother.”

A number of teachers from as far back as elementary school were also remembered as strong maternal figures. Blair, who felt torn as a young girl between her feminist instincts and her talent for homemaking, recalled two home economics teachers who “helped me see that you could be a career person without giving up the domestic things.”

One young woman who attended Blair’s talk said that as a teen- ager, she adopted her best friend’s mother because she wasn’t close to her own. Once when she was troubled, her friend’s mother found her crying in the middle of the night.

“While we talked, she stroked my hair, and ever since then I’ve associated that feeling with mothering,” she told the group.

Blair isn’t alone in her conviction that our view of Mother’s Day should be expanded.

Linda Schwarz, a feminist who serves as co-coordinator of Pro- Choice Orange County, says she’d like to see the holiday recognize all women who give to others in the Eleanor Roosevelt tradition.

“Mothering is caring for other human beings, not just your own children. It’s being interested in others, taking an active part in what is going on around you,” she says.

She has a number of single friends who have no children, but are committed to helping others through their work and involvement in social causes. Among them is a single woman who has taken an active role in the life of a child on an Indian reservation.

“These are people who are interested in world problems, in creating a better society for all children,” she says. “To exclude them from Mother’s Day when they have given so much is unfair.”

Sandra Sutphen, who is chairwoman of the political science department at Cal State Fullerton and has no children, admits she feels excluded on Mother’s Day.

“If people saw the value of mothering in terms of nurturing, we’d have Women’s Day and Men’s Day instead of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day,” she says.

Occupations such as nursing and teaching, which traditionally attract women because they involve a lot of supporting and nurturing, are not very well paid, Sutphen points out.

“That’s a reflection of the system’s failure to acknowledge the importance of those qualities in our society,” she says.

Gloria Sklansky, a Newport Beach psychologist, says Mother’s Day is a difficult time for many women who don’t have children.

“All the world is celebrating, and they’re left out. It’s like being non-Christians at Christmas. It reinforces the fact that you’re different,” she says.

And in a society that places so much importance on being a mother in the traditional sense, some women feel there’s a missing link in their femininity if they haven’t given birth, she adds.

Instead of thinking, “This is the most important part of being a woman and I don’t have it,” she suggests women without children look at the ways they are expressing their maternal side.

“Mothering isn’t just preparing oatmeal and washing clothes,” she says. “It’s also being a role model, a confidante and a supporter.”

Andrea Kaye, a Santa Ana marriage and family therapist, became a stepmother about two years ago, but her strong maternal instincts were finding expression long before that through her work.

“I mother my patients,” she says. “The idea is to help them develop their own nurturing, protective inner mother. If their mother wasn’t a healthy model, they need to create one out of other loving people they’ve met in their life--a teacher, therapist or friend.”

Touching is an important part of mothering, she adds, and the hugs she gives generously to her patients are a natural expression of her motherly side.

“The nonverbal messages mothers give can be more powerful than the verbal ones,” she stresses.

Jeanne Preble, another therapist for whom motherly hugs and words of encouragement are a natural part of the counseling process, says nurturing the potential in others--”seeing them as wonderful, capable and talented”--is what mothering is all about.

Preble, who practices in Fullerton and Irvine, says she receives Mother’s Day cards from people for whom she has become a substitute mom as well as from her own grown children.

She sees mothering as the ability “to show respect for individuality, to listen, and to be there in ways the person needs instead of in the ways you need to give.”

But the quality she most identifies with mothering--the one that can be most rejuvenating when it touches those in trouble--is an “awe of the world, a sense of amazement at the possibilities in everyone.”

“We tend to lose that when life deals us a blow. But mothering can revive it,” she says.