Happy Mother’s Day

“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before.

The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.”

Your world is turned upside down with the birth of a child. Through motherhood, you are irrevocably changed – it’s like a chemical reaction that occurs in your heart. You have to grow into the new you because you have never been here before.

There are many kinds of mothers; there are many ways to be mothers. Not one mother is the same as the next. We all do it differently. We do it the best we can with what we know. We do it the best we can with the level of self-awareness available to us at the time. We do the best we can with what we have.

Motherhood is a doorway to getting to know yourself.

I knew that I always wanted to be a mother. I just never anticipated how it would change me, or how much I would revel in it. Mothering is not just something you do (and there is lots of doing); it becomes part of the very fabric of who you are. I am more than I was before I became a mum. It’s been a doorway to getting to know more about who I am.

Your children see all 360 degrees of you. They help you discover parts of yourself that you never knew existed before becoming a mother. Children provide an invitation for you to dance with yourself, and life, in a journey of perpetual self-discovery. It has been the most profound personal-development adventure. What about you?

Yes, there are also more lines on my face, and I have earned every one of them! The frown lines from worry as well as smile lines from all the happiness that motherhood has brought me. There is a sense of joy and pride that makes me feel like my heart might actually burst sometimes and then there is the overload and overwhelm that hits from time-to-time as the demands on, and concerns of, a mother threaten to overwhelm and drown me. If you are a mum, you will have experienced these extremes. It comes with the turf, no matter how young or old your children are.

Happy Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day to every woman who plays a mothering role, sowing into the life of a child, whether that child is hers biologically, or not. It takes a village of many ‘mothers’ to raise children and we all do it differently.

To my mum, my sisters and my many girlfriends who have helped me to raise my boys, thank you from the bottom of my heart. And to those mothers who have invited me into their children’s lives, it has been a privilege to walk alongside you.

PIGLET: How do you spell LOVE?

POOH: You don’t spell it, you feel it.