Mother’s Day is a complicated holiday for me. It’s the day my mother died 11 years ago. It’s also the weekend that “Lilly,” the first feature film I’ve written and directed, will be released in theaters across the county. Filled with these dichotomous emotions, I find a meaningful thread of resilience woven between them, one that has shaped my own life and is at the heart of the story of the film.
“Lilly,” starring Patricia Clarkson , is based on the life of Lilly Ledbetter, a woman known for the extraordinary achievement of becoming the voice of fair pay, of having President Obama honor her struggle by naming his first piece of legislation after her. She was a woman who dedicated her life to making the world a better place for the rest of us. She was also a mother and grandmother – and the daughter of a complicated mother.
Lilly Ledbetter was born in 1938, in Jim Crowe Alabama, on a dirt farm with no electricity or running water. She was an only child who grew up in poverty, picking cotton at the age of eight for pennies a bag. When I look at Dorothea Lange dustbowl images of hollowed-out mothers, I imagine Lilly’s mother Edna, not surprised that she couldn’t rise above her own difficulties to speak of love to her only child…