A Tribute to Motherhood

Big sigh…Here I am, having pulled myself from the last battle fought in the war on motherhood, and just like the veteran momma that I am, a day late (okay, 2 days late) to my Mother’s Day message. I realize my abrupt and barely noticed departure from business and social media presence has left me feeling a newfound sense of awareness. Not just of my own sense of self, but of layer upon layer of motherhood. For this is an arena for which one can not fully prepare. There is no book or movie or podcast that is informative enough to get the job done. There is no training program that even the most committed can complete. There is no group or experience or child that can teach us what is to come with the next one. It is purely raw, vulnerable, fully exposed intensity day after day after day…..

In truth, there are moments, hours, days and sometimes even the rare week of relief. But we don’t see it coming. It’s not the result of saved up sick days, PTO or planned vacation time.  It hits just as hard and just as unexpected as the most acute and difficult days of parenthood. Relief days come without warning and so all of the ways we might dream of recuperating when we're in the thick of it, somehow don’t even occur to us when things feel simple and when time becomes available. There is often just a numbness. A vacancy. A void. And inside this void is where the questions begin.  We start to question how well we’re doing? Where we’ve gone wrong. We start to see how we must continue forward on our path to becoming the best version of ourselves for the sake of these mini-me’s who we want to be better and safer than we are. 

The truth is, to wish for a better version of ourselves is the greatest gift of all. To have so much love  and desire to help another human being grow safely that we are willing to revisit our past pains is incredibly powerful and is a gateway to how incredibly powerful healing can be.  We ache for the mother we wished we’d been, yearn for the credit we know we deserve, fight for the justice of a being that isn’t us but that mirrors all of the parts of ourselves that are both joyful and painful to look at.  

As mothers, we need time alone but never want to miss a moment of togetherness.  We celebrate holidays we don’t understand, attend events we don’t like and develop interests we’d never have found ourselves.  It’s veganism at the steak house on special occasions and teaching someone to clean a bathroom when we could so much more easily just do it ourselves.  It's baseball in the rain and vacations in strange cities to give little dreamers something to believe in.  It’s a desire to create magic so that the next generation has something powerful to inspire their own growth. 

Motherhood is reevaluating our patterns, questioning our beliefs, and a heart so big and so full that it literally aches with love, a sensation that makes no sense and at the same time, is the only thing that makes perfect sense. It’s clarity over the big things and absolute chaos in the little things.  It's exhaustion but a drive so charged that we cannot stop.  It is a relationship, a responsibility and a gift that breaks us down and builds us up over and over again. 

I believe that my precious children are a gift and that my experience as their mother has a Divine quality that I might not fully understand in this lifetime or the next.  I believe that the long days and the short nights exist to teach me values that no other experience on this earth can teach me.  I believe in the power of motherhood. I believe that being a mother is the single most important work I will do in this life. I believe that I am the student and that my children are my greatest teachers. I believe that motherhood has invited me to heal and has created a space for healing to exist. 

I offer grace, gratitude and warmth to the other mothers…the ones who are there when I cannot be. The ones who feed, clothe, love and pray for my children because I am simply not enough all by myself. I offer humility for the other mothers who can reach my babies when I cannot. To the mothers who love my precious babies in the ways I am unable. Gratitude to the mothers who feed me with their encouragement or their ability to solve the puzzles that I cannot solve. To the mothers who hold space for my own becoming. To the mothers who mother me.  To the mothers who stand beside me and raise the vibration of nurturing energy on our planet. 

I offer love to the mothers with vacant wombs and empty arms. To the mothers who yearn. To the mothers inside the ravages of war and to the mothers who have died for our children. To the mothers whose children are grown and to their loneliness.  To the mothers of scarcity and the mothers of prosperity. 

I offer gratitude and affection to the mother who raised me. To the mother who made me believe in the power of motherhood. To the mother who sheds tears on my behalf and whose blood runs through my veins. To the grandmothers and the generations before them who offer me wisdom and truth. 

I offer appreciation and awe to the mother who raised my precious husband. I offer devotedness to the mother who taught him to value, respect and love women. To the mother who wiped his scraped knees, helped him believe in himself, and who honors the man he has become so wholeheartedly. 

I offer love, indebtedness and deep respect to the other mother of my children, who loves my children despite me. Who loves them more than she fights me. Who offers me grace over and over again when motherhood blinds me.  

To the mothers standing beside me, showing up every day, determined and committed to the act and role of motherhood, offering me courage, advice and a soft place to land. 

To the gift of motherhood and all of the ways we experience it and all the days we forget to honor it.  I am honored beyond words to be called “mom.”