How many ways of being a mother exist? How much are we sometimes pressured by an internalized image of what an ideal mother should be?
In „The Journey of the Adopted Self“ (1994) I came across Betty Jean Lifton’s finding of what resonates with my way of being a mother the most: „No dictionary can define a mother as well as a mother herself. An Abyssinian noblewoman speaks to us through the centuries: The woman conceives. As a mother she is another person than the woman without child. She carries the fruit of the night for nine months in her body. Something grows. Something grows into her life that never again departs from it. She is a mother. She is and remains a mother even though her child die, though all her children die. For at one time she carried the child under her heart. And it does not ever go out of her heart ever again. Not even when it is dead.“
Touching, isn’t it?
There is more to being a mother, I agree. – It doesn’t include all the people who take a human being by the hand, guide him/her, care about and for him/her, nurture, help him grow … and on and on. – I am already stressed out by the mere thought of what the perfect mother should to be like. – I don’t like the word „should“, anyway.
How do you feel when you think of a mother, your own mother, being a mother or even becoming one? Or did your yearning of becoming one bring you here?
The subject is big.
The wonderful thing about life is: When you haven’t received all the things you need in order to live a good life, there are ways to receive it from other people. Even as a grown-up. It is never too late. And you can pass on what you have learned so far if someone is open to it.
And you can become a mother without conceiving a child on the physical level.
God bless.