Cindy Sheehan: Mother, Metaphor, Mat(t)er

One argument that I make at the conclusion of Self-Help, Inc. is that our culture is in need of a revitalized metaphor of motherhood. Not the insular version of motherhood that one finds in the literature of recovery—taking care of the wounded "inner child" that each of us supposedly carries around. Instead we need to invoke a more robust metaphor (and reality) of caring for each other, our children, our culture, our nation, our environment.

George Lakoff has been making a similar case in his role as advisor to the exiled Democratic party. (I've been a fan since first reading his Metaphors We Live By, co-authored with Mark Johnson, in the early 1980s.) Lakoff argues that concerned Americans need to mobilize the image and metaphor of maternal care to counter the radical, conservative right who won the White House and Congress by appealing to the metaphor of the strong, disciplining father.

Enter Cindy Sheehan, Crawford, TX, August 2005.

Sheehan has captured media attention because she embodies what the media calls "the ultimate sacrifice." Usually we understand the "ultimate sacrifice" as being giving one’s own life. But motherhood, with its incredible capacity to blur the boundaries between self and other, allows Seehan to make the "ultimate sacrifice" yet live to tell—and ask—about it.

Mother-mater-matter asks vacationing-vacate-vacant father for an explanation: how to make meaning from her loss. In the process, Sheehan makes her own.


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Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life

Metaphors We Live By