Give Gifts to Yourself and Your Mom This May.
We love creating unique, natural products here at Branru Farm. They make great gifts for yourself or a loved one at any time of year, but especially in May. It's a month that really kicks off the start of the summer season, for one thing. It also contains some important occasions.
May and Mother's Day
Mother's Day is the one of the big May holidays celebrated throughout the United States on the second Sunday each May. Every year on Mother's Day people around the country celebrate their moms, often giving them special gifts like Lilac Body Lotion or Aloe and Cucumber Scented Candles.
Early incarnations of Mother's Day
Mother's Day in the U.S. has a bit of a convoluted and confusing history. It initially began not as a holiday celebrating mothers, but as a peace gathering between mothers. After the Civil War, mothers of sons who died fighting on opposite sides began gathering to support each other and campaign for peace.
The next step towards what we now know as Mother's Day came when Ann Jarvis (not to be confused with her daughter, Anna) organized Mother's Work Days. Her initial goal was to improve sanitation and help control disease because she had seen the effects of a typhoid outbreak on Confederate and Union camps during the war. Ten years later, she established “Mothers Friendship Day” to reunite families divided by the conflict. Then she began campaigning for a day devoted specifically to celebrating mothers, but she died in 1905 before anything came of that.
The 1870s and 1880s saw many Mother's Day observances around the country at the local level, but a national holiday still wasn't established. On June 2, 1872 a woman named Julia Ward Howe tried to start her own version of Mother's Day in New York City, but it wasn't the type of holiday we know now. It was a demonstration banding mothers together to protest for peace. That demonstration, although moved to Boston, continued annually for about a decade.
The Mother's Day Holiday We Know Today
Of course, the Mother's Day we all know now is quite different. It's a day designed to celebrate the moms themselves, not post-war peace keeping efforts. It's a day for giving cards, flowers, and gifts like goat milk soap.
That change first came about when Philadelphia merchant and advertising pioneer John Wanamaker teamed up with Ann Jarvis' daughter, Anna after Ann's death. Anna managed to get Mr. Wanamaker to help with getting Mother's Day declared a holiday. West Virginia became the first state to recognize Mother's Day as an annual holiday beginning in 1910. By 1914 it was declared a national holiday.
May and Mental Health Awareness
While you are pampering your mom this May, you should also make sure to take care of yourself. May is National Mental Health Awareness Month, and in 2024 the entire week of May 12 through 18 is specially devoted to mental health awareness.
It's important to note there are two types of mental health to consider. There's general mental health, which we all need to be mindful about. Then there are mental health disorders like depression. The latter category usually requires medical intervention, but the former is something you can easily work on on a daily basis at home, mostly by finding ways to reduce stress in your daily life.
One way to improve your general mental health on a daily basis is to eat a balanced diet and combine that with a fair amount of exercise or general activity. Exercise releases endorphins, which are mood enhancers. Since exercise will tire you out, make sure you get enough sleep every night for even better results. Calming activities like favorite hobbies are also fantastic stress relievers. Another way to reduce stress daily is to indulge in aromatherapy.
We offer a wide range of great scented goat milk soaps, lotions, and scented candles that are all great for that purpose. You can use the lotions on the go whenever you want a little mood booster. The candles and soaps are perfect for indulging at home, especially after a long day. We hope you'll find some great scents you love in our Branru Farm collections.