The longer days of May brought early spring greens of two kinds of Arugula, Spinach, Mustard, and young lettuces thinned from the rows, providing daily salads. Around Mother’s Day, the variegated green and white blades of Solomon’s Seal, a gift to my wife from a daughter of hers, carried flowering white flowers under them. Shortly later, pale bluish-purple irises bloomed in abundance, followed by a profusion of pink roses, honeysuckle bush flowers, and whitish lilacs burst forth, filling the garden and our home with the sweet smells of May. By late May, pinkish white peonies were blooming in abundance, which my wife brought in as a tabletop altar to her beloved mother, who passed after almost seventeen years of living with my wife, her family, and me.

My wife recalled as a very young girl taking irises given to her by her Mom in a procession with other girls bearing flowers as an offering at the grotto of Mary at their parish. She recalled the reverence she felt for a woman’s ability to give life and recognized her own special nature as a young girl who would grow into a mother taking part in the sacred re-creation of Earthly life.

Years later, my wife is a Mom not only of her children, but also a second Mom to several younger women, and a devoted friend to many. After decades of being a stalwart friend, a second Mom, and long-term babysitter to children and grandchildren of friends, my wife has one of the most robust webs of life I have ever seen. Still in contact with friends she has known in her youngest days, in high school, college, and throughout her life, she is one of the most loyal and nurturing people I have ever met. She simply says, “This is my activism.”

At the same time, I am continuing to have dialogues with people who I know who are from different political and cultural backgrounds. With one woman, we discussed her life as someone who responded to hardships in her childhood and adulthood with a Christ-like forgiveness, eventually helping a family member who had mistreated her feel remorse for his actions, though at great cost to herself. I told her, hearing of her travails and faithfulness, that her life story reminded me of a feminist theologian who said that in the millennia of Christianity, women had been living as Jesus while receiving the abuse and cruelty of men. I did not know how she would react. She took it as a high compliment, as her intention is to follow the example of Jesus.

Like many people, I faced a childhood filled with toxicity and some forms of abuse, which damaged me and made me angry. Some of the abuse and a lot of the hostility I encountered was from puritans who condemned me for being different from them, other abuse came from those closer to me. As I matured and sought to overcome my anger, so that I could be a better family man, I found it necessary to leave my original web of life, forgiving and forgetting an unhappy childhood. Rather than sacrificing myself, I devoted my life to good works, including being the best family man I could—which is not particularly good, despite my own intentions. I knew that the abusers, including the puritans, justified their abuse as somehow necessary for my own good, or a natural consequence of a fault of mine, so they would never be able to repent—the abusers, especially the puritans, believe that they are the chosen ones and they need not apologize to a fallen person like me.

When faced with the Christ-like question, who do we make sacrifices for? many people become caught up in maintaining relationships with toxic others in our families, communities, and romantic relationships, in oftentimes vain attempts to help the toxic people find a better life. For me, I made the decision that if I were to sacrifice myself, it would be not to die for others, especially those who had harmed me or others, but to live for my family and community, while doing as little harm to those outside of these centers. For all my failures on this path, and there are many, they would have been much greater had I remained in toxic relationships with the people from my past.

My wife does not believe she should sacrifice herself. Rather, her abundant love of life and younger people springs from her heart in increasing measures as she becomes older. Though she works hard to provide love and care to others, it is a joyous, if tiring, calling for her. Her ability to provide the mother’s love of May is an act of self-love as well as love of others, rather than a sacrifice. Her essential work of life, so constant throughout the decades, is rewarded by the love and companionship of those she has cared for.

For myself, the hazards of sacrificing myself and those around me to the toxicity of those in my original web of life has passed from my life, as have the people who harmed me during that time. However, my new life has created a different hazard: being consumed by activities in the human world away from my family. Unlike my wife, who has centered her activism on her family and home, I have ventured into the community around us, pursuing work and community goals that occupy my time. As a result, my expansion in the work and community world, which I trumpeted to myself as acting on faith, has lessened my connections to my wife and her family, including my step-granddaughter. I see this in my step-granddaughter’s greater distance from me, in an uncertainty with me that she does not have with my wife, and with an emotional distance from others in my wife’s family.

Years ago, my I wrote a story about families who wanted peace being driven into the deep woods to escape being used into war, as so many young people are. It is an ancient story, though many do not realize how common it is. At a peak in the story, I planned a speech by a matriarch, seeking to preserve her family and children from the emperor’s men who pursued them. After taking time to prepare us, I asked my wife to speak from her heart, asking her what she would say to the men of the warring patriarchal world. I wrote down what she said and used it as the speech of the peace-loving matriarch.

My wife spoke of the folly of war, but also said that there had been a time that men had to leave the home and hearth of their families to deal with the outside world. In our quest to make the world better for our families, we had become lost, failing to understand any longer the joyous needs of the family we had once belonged to. Though it was time for men to return to the hearth and home and give and accept the love of families, we no longer understood the importance of that sacred origin of our lives. The long-forgotten hearth was what men needed to focus on, for it is the heart-felt center of the family home.

What benefits it a man if he gains the world but loses his soul? What benefits a man if he gains power-over, wealth, and prestige but loses his connection to his family? To receive the gifts of May—the companionship of families filled with Feminine love and nurturance—I must give as a loving Matriarch. Whether I give lettuce from our garden, read my step granddaughter a story from Beatrix Potter, make a meal, or simply listen attentively to the lives and stories of those I love, taking time to be present and loving in the lives of my chosen family is the only way to receive the gifts of our Mother.