Musings on Motherhood

I wanted to share some thoughts around motherhood with you on this Mother's Day.

Motherhood is a fraught and multiplicitous word. 

Many women wish to be mothers and are not. 

Others have lost their babes to this realm and grieve and walk with a hollow place in them never to be filled. Many mothers wish that they were not, or wish they could have chosen the circumstances. Some mothers birthed their babes, others accepted another's babe into their arms to raise as their own. And of course, many mothers became so by choice, in the "usual" fashion...

I am not a mother.

Not in the biological sense, in any case.

To date, this has been by choice.

As I grew older, the decision to become a mother was one that grew more weighty each year. The cracking open and crafting anew that occurs in motherhood is an experience that I desire and yet... there is a selfishness in me. That selfishness loves a full night's sleep (more so since leaving midwifery and having the choice), the whimsy of jumping on a plane for a long weekend away, the ability to make decisions for my life without the necessity of considering a growing soul in my wake, tethered eternally to my heart.

I have had the divine privilege of sitting with 100s of women as they crossed over into motherhood. 

That threshold alone is enough to make my womb ache. The joy and relief and pure adoration that lights up a woman's face as her new babe is lifted into her arms for the first time is... well, there's a reason my Instagram feed is full of birth videos. Whether or not I ever become a mother is not really what I wanted to write about here. 

It's about the importance of mothers in our society... and also the mothering that childless women do, so important in its own right. I believe it is possible to embody Mother as an archetype without ever carrying a babe in your womb, passing on your genetic material, or raising a child (whether of your blood and bone or not).

Midwives embody Mother through each phase of pregnancy, through labour, and into the postpartum days. Passing wisdom, selflessly tending to the women in their care, shepherding new life into the world. Aunties embody Mother. I had a visceral reaction the moment my first nephew arrived in this world. The reaction reverberated through my body and is said: "that's my baby". And he was. And he is. We are kin. I am his and he is mine. Women who act as the heart and the hub of community embody Mother. Regardless of their childbearing status.

Motherhood is generative, it is creative, it is an embodiment of compassion, of life, and new growth. Mothers connect and nurture. Teach and caution. And each of us can do these things.

And…

And…

And…

To the mothers raising the next generation of mighty women and compassionate men... I see you. I honour you. I weep for the isolation and pressure heaped upon you in your absolutely integral role. It is appalling to me that we place so much onus on women to do and be all the things for their children without the loving support of tight knit community. Some of you have that... have found that. And many of you have not. I know because I spent 10 years in the homes of women in those early days postpartum.

On this Mother's Day... whatever your situation in Motherhood (before, entrenched, beyond)... remember that "I need help" is not an admission of weakness or of failing. 

"I need help" is the deepest proclamation of strength.