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10 May

Silence Can Be Deafening: Behind The Scenes Of The No Mother’s Day Campaign

I’ve been participating in the ‘No Mother’s Day’ campaign – the brainchild of Christy Turlington Burns and her organization, Every Mother Counts – and will continue to do until Mother’s Day on Sunday. But not everyone agrees with the campaign. For some, it’s the message of the campaign – that we set aside the celebration of ourselves as mothers in order to draw attention to those who die in childbirth (isn’t celebrating mothers central to valuing mothers, and shouldn’t we seize every opportunity that we can to turn our attention to the value of mothers?) For others, it’s the strategy of the campaign, which encourages silence (not everyone agrees that silence is a useful – or empowering, or effective, or meaningful – strategy. Shouldn’t we raise our voices, they ask? Shouldn’t we FIGHT silence?) It’s a controversial campaign, and one, I think, that raises great questions around how we use our platforms for social good. So I sat down with Christy to talk it through.