Olivia Tripp Morrow, artist and dreamer, shares reflections on Mother’s day, spring, and the Tally Tripp Memorial Fund.

Growing up, we had a Mother’s Day tradition of bringing my mom breakfast in bed. My dad would wake up early to make pancakes and cut fruit while my sister and I picked flowers from the garden, and we would load up a tray to bring her breakfast, coffee, juice, flowers, homemade cards, and the Sunday paper. The memory of my sister and I scrambling up onto the bed to surprise my mom with breakfast on those special mornings is still so crisp in my mind. In hindsight, she was probably less surprised over time as this became a Mother’s Day tradition, but our simple gesture of love and appreciation for her was always met with such earnest joy and excitement that it never got old for any of us.

This year will be our 3rd Mother’s Day without my mom. I don’t know at what point we stop counting the years, or if the number of years that we’ve lived without her ever becomes believable. When it comes to milestones of loss, the years and months and days that we normally use to measure time seem to somehow flatten it. Two years, five months, and four days… This provides a certain degree of information, and yet these numbers cannot possibly contain all that has happened since she left this world. How could they? These measurements say nothing of the brutal seasons we have entered and emerged from, or the ones we are still fighting our way through.

Spring was always my mom’s favorite season. There is an inherent hopefulness about perennials pushing their way through the soil and snow, tree buds on bare branches bursting into blooms, and birds gathering materials for new nests that will soon shelter new life. I didn’t care much for spring when I was younger, but more recently I’ve come to appreciate the gifts that this season offers: the opportunity to make plans for the future, and to plant the seeds we wish to see grow in future seasons.

This year following Mother’s Day, and during Mental Health Awareness Month, I hope you will join me in supporting the future growth of the Tally Tripp Memorial Fund at Common Threads Project (CTP). The memorial fund was established in 2024 with the goal of supporting the next generation of trauma clinicians, and raising money to take this important work where it is needed most. Since 2024, CTP has partnered with the Neem Foundation in Nigeria to do just that. Through this collaboration, the Neem Foundation staff are building expertise in the Common Threads’ methodology of healing trauma, and will be able to train and mentor others, thereby expanding access to this specialized care in a place where it is desperately needed. So far, this program is thriving, and it has been made possible by individual donations to this memorial fund. However, more funds are needed in order to continue this work in the coming year.

If you are able, please consider making a monthly donation to the Tally Tripp Memorial Fund to support the vital work of Common Threads Project. No amount is too small! Monthly donations provide stability and predictability, which is immensely helpful for the organization and the practitioners who implement this important work.

You can find the donation page for the Tally Tripp Memorial Fund here and read more about the Nigeria project here.

Thank you so much for your support!

Olivia

Olivia Tripp Morrow is a multi-disciplinary artist and arts educator in the DC Metro Area. You can learn more about her work, and sign up for her newsletter, on her website: https://www.otmorrow.com

Planting the seeds we wish to see grow in future seasons