"Mother’s Day is a day of celebration–it is also a day of contemplation". - Kitsi (Kathryn) Watterson
It is easy to gloss over the challenges and feelings of loss that motherhood brings. As we create our new identity of “mother” we find it is a messy mix of emotions and realities. So, we often blur the edges of the truth because motherhood is so many things.
To begin with, becoming a mother is choosing to mortgage your heart. It is choosing to step into the unknown. It is risk-taking of the highest order, knowing that it could just as easily be the greatest joy ever felt or an unimaginable tragedy.
The love we feel for our growing baby mixes with the ambivalence of this new and ever changing role. In one moment we can be filled with feelings of hope and promise and then be harshly reminded of our inadequacies, our fears and our losses, the surmountable ones and the unthinkable ones. Our lurking childhood memories return from the deep, and confront us taking the form of our growing child over whom we have full responsibility and control.
We are learning every day that our helpless baby does not stay helpless, and belongs to us less and less, destined to leave the nest.
The mother-child relationship begins with faces up close, noses touching, breaths mingling.
Before long, you realize things have changed and instead you’re looking into a rearview mirror, and it’s your child waving goodbye to you, first up close and then you watch as they get smaller and smaller until they and you are out of sight.
Hopefully, they return to you intentionally, as independent, thoughtful and kind adults and you are reunited as friends and family till death parts you.
Mother’s Day, wherever it’s celebrated, is hard for many. We think about those who are waiting and hoping to become mothers, a question waiting to be answered.
Let us remember and observe a few moments of silence for mothers everywhere–those who are currently experiencing the unimaginable and those who have passed through unthinkable experiences.
Give yourself a hug, as if to a child.
Warmly,
Miss Pam
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