Happy Mother’s Day to all of you moms out there!  Special wishes to the single moms doing it all alone.  Single moms are some of the strongest and most determined women in the world.

How do you define motherhood?  I remember when I was young and expecting my first child, I was so excited.  The anticipation of caring for a tiny human was almost overwhelming. 

The bewildering changes in my body as the pregnancy progressed were nothing compared to the changes to come.  But ignorance is bliss.  I was sure if I had enough hooded towels for baby, everything would be fine. As my baby grew inside me week by week, I was filled with questions.  Who would he or she look like?  (Knowing the gender prior to birth was rare in the ‘olden days’)  Would they be perfect in every way?  What would they become?  Sometimes I doubted my ability to be a mother. Although I knew from a young age I wanted to be a mother one day, now the day had come and I was a little scared.  When my daughter was born and we brought her home I was incredulous at the sharp turn my life had taken.  Nothing and no one can prepare a woman for caring for an infant 24/7. 

It was a bit of a shocker, I must admit.  I remember being in awe of how little sleep this tiny creature needed.  I was in awe of the days passing so quickly and yet so slowly at the same time.  I was in awe at how having a shower or having more than two hours sleep at once was suddenly a huge accomplishment.  While I was conducting the most important task of my life, I was getting nothing done.  So it is true that motherhood is a conundrum. 

It is an irony of sorts; slow and quick, joy and pain, giving and losing, love and discipline, messy and beautiful, eternal and fleeting, enormous and minutiae all at the same time. There is your irony.

These contrasts are even more defined during the transition of divorce.

…Some  quotes on motherhood…

 “Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit—Will Travel

“In my previous life I was a civil attorney. At one point I truly believed that was what I wanted to be- but that was before I’d been handed a fistful of crushed violets from a toddler. Before I understood that the smile of a child is a tattoo: indelible art. ”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper

“guilt to motherhood is like grapes to wine”
― Fay Weldon

“Mothers are all slightly insane.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Please share your thoughts and quotes on motherhood..

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