Incendiary Advice

The love between mother and child is primal. A heady alchemy suffused within the womb, it's stronger than any other bond. The connection transcends humanity; most females in the animal kingdom share a fierce, instinctive protective behavior towards their offspring.

In the wee hours while this amazing, autonomous, separate-yet-connected joy of my life called "my child" struggles with yet another bout of influenza, I am reminded again of this sacred tie - through the words of a tireless mother: Cindy Sheehan.

We've never met. Yet. But we share the intimate language of loss. I recognize it in every post she writes at Daily Kos.

We share a different silent bond, that of who know firsthand the pain stemming from a child's death. Only, I was given a second chance. Cindy wasn't. Which makes her struggle, and her ongoing strength, all the more poignant.

Read her words and you see in Cindy a mother, grieving but unbowed, heartbroken over the loss of Casey but resolved that no more mothers should lose their children for an unjust cause:

"I was feeling very down when I was flying to Waco yesterday. I did a lot of crying and missing Casey on the way out from Sacramento. I am not at the place in my grieving yet where I can look at all of our good times and feel grateful for them. Remembering many, many happy Thanksgivings past only made me feel worse, not better."

Cindy's fight, her words, actions and beliefs are so powerful because they're heartfelt. They're simple. They're exactly what I'd expect from a mother whose child was taken from her for reasons that don't make sense - to her, or many other mothers.

The tide began to turn last August, when Cindy Sheehan showed the personal courage and strong conviction so sadly absent in the man she wanted to confront.

If anyone understands the senselessness of war, the moral diminishment that results from taking life, it's a mother. After all, we're the only ones who truly understand the miraculous experience of giving life. Perhaps, finally, it is up to us to stop the madness.

We can take a page from Tori Amos' book and call it A Mother Revolution.

"Mother Revolution"

Lucky me
I guessed the kind of man
That you would turn out to be
Now I wish that I'd been wrong and then
I could remember to breathe
And all along the watchtower
The night horses and the black mares
Ready themselves for the outcome
For the strange times upon us

But what you didn't count on
Was another mother of
A mother revolution
But what you didn't count on
Was another mother of
A mother revolution
What you didn't count on, was another mother of..a mother revolution..