Have you ever heard the expression “mother knows best?” Throughout history, women have poured their wisdom and love into raising their children. This Mother’s Day, we're exploring the letters of six remarkable women from history and the motherly advice they shared with their children.
Abigail Adams (1744–1818)
Abigail Adams was the wife and close advisor to the second president of the United States, John Adams. In 1780, she penned a letter to her twelve-year-old son, John Quincy Adams. At this time, the thirteen colonies were five years into the American Revolutionary War. Her son was set to travel to France to receive his education, and she offered words of advice, knowing it would be several years before she would see him again:
The Habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. All History will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruits of experience, not the Lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the Heart, then those qualities which would otherways lay dormant, wake into Life, and form the Character of the Hero and the Statesman.
Ida B. Wells (1862–1931)
In 1920, activist and writer Ida B. Wells sent a letter to her two daughters while she was away on a speaking tour. She was disappointed she would not be home in time to celebrate Halloween with them, and offered words of encouragement and affection:
Whenever I think of my dear girls, which is all the time, such a feeling of confidence comes over me. I know my girls are true to me, to themselves and their God wherever they are, and my heart is content. I have had many troubles and much disappointment in life, but I feel that in you I have an abiding joy. I feel that whatever others may do, my girls are now and will be shining examples of noble true womanhood…
Marie Curie and daughter Irène, 1925. Image from Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 4.0.
Marie Curie (1867–1934)
The scientist Marie Curie had a close relationship with her daughters—teaching and encouraging them to pursue their own trailblazing careers. In 1914, Curie sent a note to her daughter, Irène, from Paris. It was one month after war broke out in Europe. Curie wrote words of courage as the German Army threatened the city:
Things are not going very well, and we all have a heavy heart and disturbed spirit. We need great courage and I hope we will not lack it. We must keep the firm hope that after these bad days, good times will return. It’s in that hope that I lock you in my heart, my beloved daughters.
Marie Antoinette (1755–1793)
Many of us know the tragic fate of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. Hours before her death in 1793, she wrote to her sister-in-law offering some final words of advice. Calm and resolute, the queen asked her children to stick together and help one another:
Let them both think of the lesson which I have never ceased to impress upon them, that the principles and the exact performance of their duties are the chief foundation of life; and then mutual affection and confidence in one another will constitute its happiness. Let my daughter feel that at her age she ought always to aid her brother by the advice which her greater experience and her affection may inspire her to give him. And let my son in his turn render to his sister all the care and all the services which affection can inspire. Let them, in short, both feel that, in whatever positions they may be placed, they will never be truly happy but through their union.
Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
In 1969, the poet Anne Sexton was aboard an airplane when she was inspired to write a note for daughter, Linda, to read in the future. She hoped her words would bring comfort to her daughter later in life:
1st I love you.
2. You never let me down.
3. I know. I was there once. I too, was 40 with a dead mother who I needed still. . . .
This is my message to the 40 year old Linda. No matter what happens you were always my bobolink, my special Linda Gray. Life is not easy. It is awfully lonely. I know that. Now you too know it — wherever you are, Linda, talking to me. But I’ve had a good life — I wrote unhappy — but I lived to the hilt. You too, Linda — Live to the HILT! To the top. I love you 40 year old, Linda, and I love what you do, what you find, what you are!—Be your own woman. Belong to those you love. Talk to my poems, and talk to your heart — I’m in both: if you need me.
Maya Angelou (1928–2014)
In her book Letter to My Daughter, the poet Maya Angelou offered words of advice to a daughter she never had but sees all around her. Today, her words have inspired many to find their own path to living well.
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.
Never whine. Whining lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighborhood.
Be certain that you do not die without having done something wonderful for humanity.
Wishing everyone a Happy Mother’s Day this Sunday! Don’t forget to give the moms in your life a big hug.
Photo by Kilimanjaro STUDIOz on Unsplash
Further Reading
Angelou, Maya. Letter to My Daughter. New York: Random House, 2009
Emling, Shelley. Marie Curie and Her Daughters: The Private Lives of Science's First Family. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013.
Lawson, Dorie McCullough. Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children. New York: Doubleday, 2004
Sexton, Anne. Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters. New York: Mariner Books, 2004
Turk, Maria Popova. "Motherly Advice." The Marginalian, May 10, 2013. https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/05/10/motherly-advice/.