At Healthassist, I am so fortunate to work with an amazing team of mothers. Happy Mother’s Day to Jennifer May (who wrote this newsletter), Anne Jacoby, Diane Reilly, and Linda Braun, the newest member of our team. Each of them teaches me so much as they describe their relationships with their adult children and grandchildren.

The other mother I am so fortunate to have in my life is my own. We’ll be celebrating my mom’s 90th later this month (that’s her in the photo)!

I’m sharing three selections from Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American Newsletter. I read her newsletter every morning while having my first cup of coffee and I learn something new every day.

The first is from Mother’s Day 2025. I loved it because I consider myself someone who mothers without the title!

The second is from Mother’s Day 2024 and, among other things, explains that the day began in the 1870s and was then written in the plural as “Mothers’ Day.” It introduces us to Julia Ward Howe, a key figure in the American Woman Suffrage Association. She penned, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” whose lyrics make a point of noting that Christ was “born of woman.” It was Howe’s conviction that women must have the same rights as men, and that they must make their voices heard.

The third is a newsletter written in August 2024. It is about how on August 18, 1920, the Tennessee legislature ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by a vote of 50 to 49. The deciding vote came from Harry T. Burn, who supported suffrage but was under pressure to vote no. His mother had urged him to vote yes despite the pressure. “I believe in full suffrage as a right,” he said. “I believe we had a moral and legal right to ratify. I know that a mother’s advice is always safest for her boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”