About “Mom Hug”
Greg Walton, AlwaysGodsChildren.org
“Mom Hug,” which depicts the Virgin Mary embracing a rainbow-colored sheep, a symbol of the LGBTQIA+ community, was commissioned by AlwaysGodsChildren.org from the artist David Hayward (aka Naked Pastor). Three out of my five children are transgender, which has led my family through a complex religious, social, and moral landscape. Always God’s Children is a Catholic spirituality group I started in 2022 that provides an emotionally safe space for LGBTQIA+ people, and those that love them: to pray, be authentic, share experiences and find kinship. As a Catholic, I believe that Mary, the mother of Jesus, gives all humanity the ultimate Mom Hug through her yes to bearing Christ and her continued action in God’s love with the Communion of Saints.
The idea for “Mom Hug” was inspired by a blanket in our living room. It displays an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and was given to my wife and I by Angel, a close friend of our trans daughter, Evie.
Angel came to live with us his senior year of high school because he needed a Mom Hug (and Dad Hug) big time. His parents, his mother the most insistent, had, using her faith as justification, kicked him out of the house for being gay. Angel recognized that the love in our house grew out of a Catholic faith. His thoughtful Christmas gift honored that truth while also referencing his own Hispanic upbringing and speaking to his pain and longing for all-embracing parents, especially his mom.
The strongest links to suicidality for LGBTQIA+ youth are rejection by parents, and, especially when it’s important to a young person, religion. Angel suffered not only this weight but the extra burden of prejudice due to other family issues and biases in his cultural community, a phenomenon called intersectionality.
As a teenager, the Blessed Virgin Mary also endured scrutiny and the threat of rejection for following her prophetic path of bearing Jesus and his Gospel of loving God and loving the other as other. She understands the even greater pain of watching a child suffer because of people’s ignorance.
The biases within my Catholic community sometimes make it difficult for me to sit in front of our white, Western European depictions of Mary because I encounter Catholics who - intentionally or unintentionally - use her for an agenda that reinforces their fear of others.
I never, however, feel that way in front of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Indigenous Lady, Patroness of the Americas. Following the way of Christ, she focused on the lowliest and the least in 1531, and still does now as they continue to endure conquest, genocide, occupation and othering because of humanity’s penchant for power hoarding. In the face of this, I cling to the Matriarch of my Catholic faith and feel tremendous devotion to her.
I drape the Our Lady of Guadalupe blanket on our rocking chair to remind me of Angel, LGBTQIA+ youth and Mary's motherly reflection of God’s unstoppable love for us all. She is placed on the chair in such a way that it seems like Mary is sitting in our living room rocking “back and forth, back and forth” like the mom in the book Love You Forever. I can wrap her around me and rock with her.
Angel is doing well. He graduated college and serves with the National Guard. He has a chosen family of love and some reconciliation with his parents. A Catholic Mom and Dad hug and an image of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, are a part of his story.
Peace,
Greg