Motherhood has taken my life to the next level of enlightenment. It has truly ripped me out of my own mind and smashed me into selflessness. This experience has crept into my every pore and turned me inside out. Being Roan's mother is the most mythical experience of my life. I am unearthed and undone. I will never be the same.

As a mother I created this page as an offering for women to come refresh and reconnect with their children and the beauty and importance of motherhood. It is a gathering of thoughts, poems and stories to help us fall in love again and again and to remind us that we are not alone on this tremendous journey.

The Holy Mother speaks to Her child at the threshold

Child, you are shooting star propelled
I love you, little star-flake,
Do not weep to leave the bosom of God,
for there is a god on earth where I am sending you,
and he will be your father.
Do not cling to my robe, little one,
for these swirls of my robe are the nebulae
You will see in the heavens there.
You tear my heart with your longing eyes, my child,
but look, I am coming with you:
there is a daughter of mine on earth,
and she will be your mother.
Even now the Temple you see about you
Is her womb.

Do not fear to leave the Land of Light.
I would not send you into darkness,
but in their hearts where I send you
the sun of your homeland burns.

They will know who you are
for they know each other.
Even the smallness you have taken on
they will love,
the flailing limbs, the eyes
that do not see, the leaves of the moon
that fold about the sun.
They will hear your heart inside your cry.
They will see the wings of light, my wings,
that enfold you all your life.
Even now, they love you.
They know, as we do,
that in all births
is the one Child who is born.

Go now, little child.
In the eyes of your mother find me again,
in your father's heart find me.
Do not be afraid to put on this tiny disguise.
How could they fail to recognize you,
you who said to them

I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
I was a stranger and you took me in,
naked and you clothed me, I was sick
and you cared for me, I was in prison
and you came unto me.

So go to them, vast and ancient soul,
go to them now.
They are also waiting to be born.
- © Liana Herbertson

The Shape of a Mother

Beautifully remarkable site documenting the changing, incredible shape of womens' bodies as they become Mothers.

Mother's Day, May 13, 2007

Julia Ward Howe is today best known as the writer of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. She was married to Samuel Gridley Howe, educator of the blind, who was also active in abolitionism and other reforms.

Julia Ward Howe published poetry, plays and travel books, as well as many articles. A Unitarian, she was part of the larger circle of Transcendentalists, though not a core member.

She became active in the women's rights movement later in life, playing a prominent role in several suffrage organizations and in women's clubs. Based on her experiences following the Civil War, she became a peace activist and penned the following proclamation. The holiday was declared officially by states beginning in 1912, and in 1914 the President, Woodrow Wilson, declared the first national Mother's Day.

Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

...the significance of this - god nursing at the breast, is the way the great mystery wants to interact with us. it's part of the divine play. the mystery doesn't simply make us, but it submits to us and takes nourishment from us even though it has no NEED to, it delights to do it. it's more than god taking milk from a mortal. it is god creating and being a mother all at once... Bill Rogers

...No one prepared me, before I became a mother for the sheer visceral pleasures of the flesh of the little body now entrusted to me. The delicious softness of a baby's skin. The familiar rise and fall of every plump fold along those dimpled limbs. The rosy scent of the top of a newborn's head. The incredible perfection of miniature fingers and toes. The familiar soft weight slung over your shoulder or working at your breast. And the mixture of thrill and pride at one day letting that always-growing body slam into yours for a great big hug...
- Paula Spencer, baby love- baby i can't stop touching you, BABYTALK, November 2001

Babies are born wizened with instinct. They know in their bones what is right and what to do about it.
- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

My precious Wind Daughter,

Today I made a body cast of my daughter's nine month pregnant form. It starts at mid neck and ends at her pubic mound. The belly swelling with life and breasts already leaking colostrum were the focal points of the cast--which resembles an ancient Greek fragment I saw once in a museum. Her inside out navel is the only punctuation mark in the middle of the snow white field of the piece.

As I placed strips of plaster soaked gauze on my child's body, I remembered when I was carrying her snug in the safety of my own body and we were joined by the shared life blood coursing through our beings. After her birth, I nursed her for a year-continuing the bond began at her conception. I was Mother-in the prime of my life and power-a manifestation of the Goddess walking on Earth; filled with Life and Promise.

Today, the child I carried then is now in that sacred place.

Watching the proceedings, delighted in Mommy's nudity in the livingroom, clapping her hands as the "White Mommy Turtle" materialized, was my two year old grandaughter. The child in the womb is female, too. I am so blessed.

I cannot express in words the sense of connectedness that emanated from that space, that time, that reality. The continuance of the Feminine Principal was so incredibly felt; so precious; so powerful. The Great Hoop of the Earth with its continuing cycles centered in on a small house in Texas; for us, the world turned on an axis that emmanated from this place.

I have lived the role of Child; Maid; Mother; Crone. My life, like a perfect circle has come around and is nearing its end--I feel the cold winter blast on occasion --the reminder that all things have their season.

But for now, I am alive and awaiting the call that will bring me to the side of my laboring daughter--to assist and lend strength in any way that I can. The great miracle of birth will happen soon and a new little girl baby will grace our lives.

My heart is full--my spirit soars like a hawk.

Walk in Beauty,
Wind Mother
- © Kathleen Hanna

He moves so fast these days, like a lizard. He's babbling with great incoherent animation. He gets on all fours and rocks, like he's about to take off, like Edwin Moses in the starting block. His new thing is that he likes to stick his fingers in your mouth and examine your teeth. He does it every time we nurse. Maybe he wants to be a periodontist when he grows up. It's a little disconcerting. He's stare at my mouth for a minute when he's lying in my arms, and then reach in with these tiny monkey fingers and go tooth by tooth, checking each one for problems. Next he's going to start picking cooties out of my hair. When Sam is doing teeth, I sit there basking in our monkey lives...
- Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions

We lamented our time together as lovers and adults.
We prayed so hard to give you a house to call home.
We wanted desperately to provide you a room of your own.
We assumed the transition would happen gradually.
We thought it would be a celebration, marked with ritual and fun.
We didn't know you would love your own space so much.
You're only two but you want to sleep alone in your own bed.

I live in the moment with such intensity.
I never think a stage, a day or a feeling
will ever pass.
I can't imagine that you will ever be any different than you are
right now.
But you're changing at the speed of light-
so fast that my heart cannot keep pace with you.

Friends and family tell me how excited I should be that you're such a big girl now.
They are thrilled that you are striving for your independence, having been secretly and
sometimes overtly concerned
and critical
that all the nursing and cozy snuggling aren't good for you.
They will never know the intimate joy we share.

I miss you lying next to me more than anything I have ever lost.
I miss your lavender hair, your soft skin and your pure breath.
I miss waking up and seeing you in between daddy and me.
I miss reaching out in the night and being able to comfort you, immediately.
I miss knowing that at any moment, I could touch you, protect you and kiss you.
I miss watching you fall back to sleep, effortlessly, reassured by your contented sleep smile.
I miss feeling your beautiful soul resting peacefully.
I miss the wholeness I feel every night I lay to rest with all of my family.
I didn't realize how much you affect my serenity, my repose and the balance of my life.
I'm not ready for you to be so grown up.

I miss you sweet daughter, sweet spirit.
- Paula Vaughan

It was tempting to think that if only they could speak, infants could take us back to their beginning, to the force of their becoming; they could tell us about patience, about waiting and waiting in the dark.
- Jane Hamilton, Writer

Classes for Parenthood

You know
God really ought
To give parents
A probationary period
With classes
On the "how-nots"
And the "how-tos"
On raising children.

He ought to show them
That childhood is
To be enjoyed
Not only by the children
But by the parents too!

That "endless love"
Is of greater importance
Than the rules in the game
Of life.

That smiling and frowning
Do truly determine
The weather for the day,
Regardless of what
The scientists say.

And most of all
He should tell them
That children really aren't
"Little Adults"
That they weren't pre-programed
With all the answers and insights;
That they are just what they are--
Children!
- © Richard "Telling Bird" Dean Cook, 5/14/1980

Stretch Marks

You wear their names on your very body-
across breasts, curve of hips, once-smooth
span of belly thighs,

your children's names imprinted on your skin.
Some women (whose selves live contentedly
in the bodies of others) call this

a badge of motherhood, a source of pride
which makes you, female, at last complete,
a hero of sorts. You see it

as the aching story engraved in flesh
of how you've changed, a sign to be read
like tree rings or strata of rocks,

line after widening line.
- Laura Apol Obbink

...Lulu had crept up behind her mother and peeked into the red cloth. Fleur showed her what she was doing. Lulu poked at the bones and her mother took her hands carefully away. A frantic laughter, a feeling of painful hilarity seized Fleur, and she grabbed Lulu, swung her around and then put her down and darted off. They raced wildly up and own the lake shore, pulling at each other's clothes, throwing weeds. When they fell to the ground, Fleur's heart was beating so fast it felt like a bird trying to leave her chest. She grabbed Lulu and crushed the girl close. Although she was quick as an otter and usually squired away from being held and ducked from her mother's embrace, this time Lulu breathed out one long laugh and then fell asleep with her fingers gripping the cloth of her mother's blouse. Fleur sat on the shore for a long time with her daughter's weight heavy against her and the water rolling in, and rolling in, and without pause rolling into the shore...
- excerpt from Louise Erdrich's, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell within the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you, for life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archers hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
- Kahlil Gibran

Nearly all of us receive our first lessons in peaceful living from our mothers, because the need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence. From the earliest stages of our growth, we are completely dependent on our mother's care and it is very important for us that she express her love. If children do not receive proper affection, in later life they will often find it hard to love others.
- His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, The Path to Tranquility, Daily Wisdom

For All Moms (Present, Past or Possibly Future)

We are sitting at lunch when my daughter casually mentions that she and her husband are thinking of “starting a family.”

“We’re taking a survey,” she says, half-joking. “Do you think I should have a baby?” “It will change your life,” I say, carefully keeping my tone neutral.

“I know,” she says, “no more sleeping in on weekends, no more spontaneous vacations...”

But that is not what I meant at all. I look at my daughter, trying to decide what to tell her. I want her to know what she will never learn in childbirth classes. I want to tell her that the physical wounds of child bearing will heal, but that becoming a mother will leave her with an emotional wound so raw that she will forever be vulnerable.

I consider warning her that she will never again read a newspaper without asking “What if that had been MY child?” That every plane crash, every house fire will haunt her. That when she sees pictures of starving children, she will wonder if anything could be worse than watching your child die.

I look at her carefully manicured nails and stylish suit and think that no matter how sophisticated she is, becoming a Mother will reduce her to the primitive level of a bear protecting her cub.

That an urgent call of “Mom!” will cause her to drop a souffle or her best crystal without a moment’s hesitation. I feel I should warn her that no matter how many years she has invested in her career, she will be professionally derailed by motherhood.

She might arrange for childcare, but one day she will be going into an important business meeting and she will think of her baby’s sweet smell. She will have to use every ounce of her discipline to keep from running home, just to make sure her baby is all right.

I want my daughter to know that everyday decisions will no longer be routine. That a five year old boy’s desire to go to the men’s room rather than the women’s at McDonald’s will become a major dilemma. That right there, in the midst of clattering trays and screaming children, issues of independence and gender identity will be weighed against the prospect that a child molester may be lurking in that restroom. However decisive she may be at the office, she will second-guess herself constantly as a mother.

Looking at my attractive daughter, I want to assure her that eventually she will shed the pounds of pregnancy, but she will never feel the same about herself. That her life, now so important, will be of less value to her once she has a child. That she would give it up in a moment to save her offspring, but will also begin to hope for more years - not to accomplish her own dreams, but to watch her child accomplish theirs.

I want her to know that a cesarean scar or shiny stretch marks will become badges of honor. My daughter’s relationship with her husband will change, but not in the way she thinks, I wish she could understand how much more you can love a man who is careful to powder the baby or who never hesitates to play with his child. I think she should know that she will fall in love with him again for reasons she would now find very unromantic.

I wish my daughter could sense the bond she will feel with women throughout history who have tried to stop war, prejudice, and drunk driving. I hope she will understand why I can think rationally about most issues, but become temporarily insane when I discuss the threat of nuclear war to my children’s future.

I want to describe to my daughter the exhilaration of seeing your child learn to ride a bike. I want to capture for her the belly laugh of a baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog or a cat for the first time. I want her to taste the joy that is so real, it actually hurts.

My daughter’s quizzical look makes me realize that tears have formed in my eyes. “You’ll never regret it,” I finally say. Then I reach across the table, squeeze my daughter’s hand and offer a silent prayer for her, and for me, and for all of the mere mortal women who stumble their way into this most wonderful of callings. This blessed gift from God...that of being a Mother.
- Author Unknown

Young Hopi women often lost their first baby, since they all spent the first year of married life kneeling in front of the grinding stone producing many pounds of cornmeal as payment for their wedding robes. Babies who were born dead or who did not live past infancy were buried in crevices below the pueblos in rocky slopes of the steep mesas. It was believed that soon after burial the little soul came out of the rocks and hovered near the mother until another baby was born. It could then enter the newborn's body and live again. The little knocks and cracks often heard around the house were thought to be evidence that the soul was near. If a woman's last baby died, the Hopis thought its soul stayed near until she herself "went away" and took it with her on the trail to the sun...

Beating of children was practically unknown among the Indians. The French, who were the first white men to visit the Huron Indians in southern Ontario, were shocked that these people never struck their children; they felt such parental restraint fostered disrespect in the children. But Huron mothers held a typical Native American attitude toward beating- that it usually did the child more harm than good. The Quinalt, who lived on the Washington coast, regarded children as wholly irresponsible up to five years old and children younger than that were never to be punished. Older children, though they might be rebuked, were never whipped, for it was believed that a little girl who was abused would likely grow up to be a mother who abused her own children.
- Carolyn Niethammer, Daughters of the Earth, The Lives and Legends of American Indian Women

She is their earth...She is their food and their bed and the extra blanket when it grows cold at night; she is their warmth and their health and their shelter...
- Katherine Butler Hathaway

A woman does not have to be a biological mother in order to be an initiate into the maternal aspect of the Goddess; it comes through her own embodied maternal and feminine nature...
- Jean Shinoda Bolen

...the word most common to children's speech, most often called out, most repeated for comfort is "Mommy." I have never known a mother to feel besmirched by this- harassed, yes; but degraded? Nonsense.
- Sonia Johnson

...Gone was the self-centered twenty-three year old student, more still a girl than a woman. I had labored to bring a child into the world, and the fear and pain I suffered had somehow awakened a new compassion in my heart. I could never more return to my pretransition existence, for I had been born into motherhood and must now be initiated into the mysteries of womanhood- the nourishing life.
- Joan Borysenko

Tubs of flowers were always moved inside the birth room on the principle that the first things the eye of a newborn saw should be beautiful.
- Norman Rush

She loved him because he needed her; it was secondary that he happened to be hers, to have come from her body. He was helpless and he would move against her as if her body were his own, as if she were a source of everything he wanted. She knew that her life would from now on be dictated by that tiny creature, that his needs would be the most imporant thing in her life, that forever and forever she would be trying to fill that convulsive grasp.
- Marilyn French

Good mothering means babying the baby, accepting that his wants and his needs are the same. It includes holding him when he is too full to nurse, but he is not yet ready to sleep. Mothering is changing a diaper or playing peek-a-boo. It means recognizing that each child has an inexhaustible need to be loved for what he is- a person with his own individuality. As he grows, his nees will change. A toddler needs freedom and guidance, with an ever-watchful eye. The manner in which these early needs are met, or not met, has a great deal to do with a child's response to people and situations later in life. The way the child is mothered is important not only to mother and child, but to society as well.
- The Womany Art of Breastfeeding, The La Leche League

...my flowers are my "green babies,"
symbolic of the children of my body.
My children are the beautiful flowers that bloomed from the
ungainliness of pregnancy; by their birth my title to Royalty was
secured ~ and no one can unthrone the Queen who sits forever in
their hearts... Childhood ~ like the Iris~ is fleeting.

My flowers remind me of who and what I am:
Woman.
Maid, Mother, Crone
Co-creator,
She
Embodiment of the Living Goddess...
- © Badger Willow Horse, Kathleen Hanna

...The mother who takes her child into her arms and comforts him at night, and then peacefully falls asleep with her little one touching her body, knows and feels deep down that she is not only giving but also receiving something that words can't describe. She feels that she is part of the universe, a link in the chain of life. She forms a momentary oneness with her child which, as the need diminishes, will flower into a twosome again, much like the flowering at birth. A glow fills her body, and this glow radiates to her other children and her husband...
- Tine Thevenin, Excerpt from The Family Bed

...there was something so blissful about smelling the top of a baby's head, like becoming clean and new again yourself, getting a chance to do it over...
- Gail Godwin

Milk is the symbol of the first aspect of love, that of care and affirmation. Honey symbolizes the sweetness of life, the love for it and the happines in being alive. Most mothers are capable of giving "milk," but only a minority of giving "honey" too. In order to be able to give honey, a mother must not only be a "good mother," but a happy person.
- Erich Fromm

There Are a Few Things That You Must Know

There are a few things you must know
to become a wise parent.
You must know that you are going to die,
for then you will be able to truly live.

You must know when you have enough,
for then you will be content.
You must know how to laugh,
for then you will find healing.

There are many things you need not know.
You need not know everything your children think or do.
You need not know their secret dreams and hopes.
You need not know how life will unfold for them,
or for yourself.

Live your own life,
with all of your heart,
with all your mind,
and with all your soul.
There is no need to live theirs.
They will do that wonderfully
by themselves.
- The Parent's Tao Te Ching, William Martin

Mother's arms are made of tenderness, and sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein.
- Victor Hugo

The human infant is meant to be a continuous contact species. The composition of milk of each species gives a clue to the infant care practices natural to that species. Animals who leave their young for extended periods produce a milk high in fat and protein which satisfies the young for a relatively long period of time between feedings. Human milk is relatively low in fat and protein, necessitating frequent, seemingly continuous nursing. The human infant is meant to be carried in arms during the day and nestled with mother in bed at night - not trained into a separate sleeping arrangement before he is ready.
- Dr. William Sears, from The La Leche League's New Beginnings

Opening and closing the front door soundlessly, an art known to mothers of sleeping babies...
- Elizabeth Cunningham

Breastfeeding at Night

I wouldn't mind so much
being your all-night cafe', if
after lingering over your drink
you went politely off to bed.

It's those nights when you
nurse one drink, then order another
looking so offended
your lips in a tragic pout
when I suggest you've had enough

that make me consider
shutting down the bar altogether.
- Susan Eisenberg

When a child, my mother taught me the legends of our people; taught me of the sun and sky, the moon and stars, the clouds and storms.
- Geronimo

History of the Body
For my daughter

Body within body, I shape you out of almost nothing, give you a tight envelope to surround your soul. I deem you female-eyes cobalt blue, fingers long and translucent-without even realizing it. And after the quantum leap from single cell to complex organism, much of your body's life is beyond my conscious thought: your waking, your sleeping, the small objects of your complete desire. Complete as the perfect wings of the jay above your head or the pale stars that mark your birth with nothing but pure light. Daughter, I cannot give you anything so complete or perfect or pure. But I can give you something better. Your body, which is your life. And the fierce love of it that no one can take away. And these words that will remind you of that love. And your father's broad hand that opened the door to it. And the blankness of the rest of this page for your own words, your own history.
- Linda Nemec Foster

Additional Quote Resources

Mothers, A Loving Celebration, © 1997 Running Press
I Am Becoming the Woman I've Wanted, edited by Sandra Haldeman Martz, © 1994 Papier-Mache Press