whole mother

If you were a reader of my blog last year, you probably remember how I feel about Mother’s Day. It’s always been a difficult day, because to me, being a mother is raising a child, not giving birth to one. It’s as if I was half a mother – genetically, I was, but in practice, I wasn’t.

But this year Mother’s Day has a whole new meaning for me – because this year, I am a whole mother. I have a whole new knowledge all the other emotions that come along with being a mother in practice – the joy, the worry, the frustration. I have a whole new realization of all the work that accompanies motherhood – dealing with the screaming (like now), the sleeplessness, the monotony. I have a whole new gratitude for my own mother, for Steve’s mother, and for all the other mothers I know.

And I have a whole new purpose to add to my life and a sense of pride in the fact that I, like millions of other women, am a mother. A provider, a caregiver, and the first woman this little boy will ever love.

There is an instinct in a woman to love most her own child – and an instinct to make any child who needs her love, her own.  ~Robert Brault