Motherhood Quotes - Page 13

Florence could feel a constriction in her chest…She had been foolish enough to hope that whatever she was walking into would affect no one but herself. Now the truth was catching up with her at the speed of her galloping heartbeat…Now they had summoned her. And they knew everything

KINGDOM OF THE WOMBFrom her thighs, she gives you lifeAnd how you treat she who gives you lifeShows how much you value the life given to you by the Creator.And from seed to dustThere is ONE soul above all others --That you must always show patience, respect, and trustAnd this woman is your mother.And when your soul departs your bodyAnd your deeds are weighed against the featherThere is only one soul who can save yoursAnd this woman is your mother.And when the heart of the universeAsks her hair and mind,Whether you were gentle and kind to herHer heart will be forced to remain silentAnd her hair will speak freely as a separate entity,Very much like the seaweed in the sea --It will reveal all that it has heard and seen.This woman whose heart has seen yours,First before anybody else in the world,And whose womb had opened the doorFor your eyes to experience light and more --Is your very own MOTHER.So, no matter whether your mother has been cruel,Manipulative, abusive, mentally sick, or simply childishHow you treat her is the ultimate test.If she misguides you, forgive her and show her the right wayWith simple wisdom, gentleness, and kindness.And always remember,That the queen in the Creator's kingdom,Who sits on the throne of all existence,Is exactly the same as in yours.And her name is,THE DIVINE MOTHER.

I really admired other parents I saw running around with their kids. I thought, "How nice is that for their children?" But they also left me racked with guilt--until one mother, out of the dozens I met, told me I shouldn't feel bad. "You're not your daughter's playmate," she said, and I nearly burst out in tears, because I needed to hear that so badly.

Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deeds, on the one hand, I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman who'd sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, who'd cried with me over boyfriends, who'd clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother?Both, I realized. Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.

When the last woman dies, the last man dies!

I am Rabbit. I can be anywhere. I can be everywhere. I am outside time. I am outside dimension.

At a certain point in her life, she realises it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child.

MOTHER IS WATERI wish I couldShower your head with flowersAnd anoint your feet with my tears,For I know I have caused youSo much heartache, frustration and despair –Throughout my youthful years.I wish I could give youThe remainder of my lifeTo add to yours,Or simply eraseThe lines on your face,And mend all that has been torn.For next to God,You are the fireThat has given lightTo the flame in each of my eyes.You are the fountainThat nourished my growth,And from your chalice –Gave me life.Without the wetness of your love,The fragrance of your water,Or the trickling sounds ofYour voice,I shall always feelthirsty.

Stranger inside me, when you are born, I will give youa closed book and ask you never to read it, never rest, never forgive a man who wants to save you.

For too many women in America are becoming sick with exhaustion and stress as they try to do things that can't be -- shouldn't be -- done. Too many are eaten up by resentment toward their husbands, who are not subject to the same heartless pressures. Too many are becoming anxious and depressed because they are overwhelmed and disappointed. Too many are letting their lives be poisoned by guilt because their expectations can't be met, and because there is an enormous cognitive dissonance between what they know to be right for themselves and what they're told is right for their children. Too many feel out of control.

The professor leaned forward. “But there’s nothing more profound than creating something out of nothing.” Her lovely face turned fierce. “Think about it Cath. That’s what makes a god—or a mother. There’s nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself.

We mothers have a wonderfully precious and truly powerful role to play in the future self-images of our daughters. The truth is, the most effective way to inculcate in our daughters a fighting chance at life-long self-love and empowerment is not in the books we read to them, or the workshops we send them to, or the media we do or do not expose them to, or even the things we tell them, rather it is in the reflection of self-love and empowerment they see in us, their mothers. The model of our own empowerment gives our daughters permission to be powerful. Of course, culture and societal norms mold our view of ourselves as women, but the beliefs and behaviors of our mothers are far more influential.

Mama Ginger came calling, to set the alarm on my biological clock. Oh, and to remind me that there’s no point to me being a woman if I never have children.”“Well, if that’s true, I wasted a hell of a lot of money on panty hose and lipstick.” Jettie snorted.

My greatest hope is to be a mother who loves Jesus with a deep and abiding affection that joyfully overflows to my children.

Confession: Having kids did not fix me. I was not somehow more whole, less botched-up, or more certain just because I had a kid... I was still me, with all my holes and problems and questions - only now I was also exhuasted and had a lot more laundry to do.

Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood - finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without.

A question that always makes me hazy is it me or are the others crazy'Albert Einstein

Toys have taken over my family room. I watch Mary Poppins, and no matter how many spoonfuls of sugar I eat, action figures won’t march into a bin with the snap of my fingers.

You only confuse hope with power once in life.

Motherhood has taught me that love is the best gift you can ever give to your children.

So I guess you were hopelessly romantic and easily distracted, a B-plus mother, certainly good enough to get into Matriarchal State University but not quite good enough for St. Mary's College of the Blessed Womb Warriors.

The mother memories that are closest to my heart are the small gentle ones that I have carried over from the days of my childhood. They are not profound, but they have stayed with me through life, and when I am very old, they will still be near . . . Memories of mother drying my tears, reading aloud, cutting cookies and singing as she did, listening to prayers I said as I knelt with my forehead pressed against her knee, tucking me in bed and turning down the light. They have carried me through the years and given my life such a firm foundation that it does not rock beneath flood or tempest.

My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.These, by contrast, are the six elements of a Sacred Harp alto: rage, darkness, motherhood, earth, malice, and sex. Once you feel it, you can always do it. You know where to go for it, though it will cost you.

Whether the judge all those years ago agreed that Jenny had no right to what she wished, or whether her plainspoken grief, which she shouted out in silence from her eyes, moved him, or disturbed him, or confused him, doesn't matter. He whispered, 'Life.' And so she lived. Is living still. Will go on living, to the end of that whisper.

Maggie had learned a long time ago that each day with a child was filled with two kinds of battles: those that won the war, and those that did not.

To hell with what anyone thinks about your life, but you should know what you think about it.

Then she rushes to pick up Asha from school, where she is known only as "Asha's mom" by the other mothers, who seem to all spend a lot of time together. Somer has no time for the PTA and bake sales. She has no time for herself. Her profession no longer defines her, but neither does being a mother. Both are pieces of her, and yet they don't seem to add up to a whole.

It's tough being AWESOME all the time, but the kids need someone to look up to!

A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.

I can feel them. The babies. They're not crawling all over me. They're not vomiting in my hair or shrieking. They're doing perfectly normal baby things, and I'm keeping them alive. But I resent them. Their constancy, their intrusion on my relationship and my free time and my naps and my imagination and my heart. They've come too soon, and I can't do any of what I had planned. All I can do is survive.

My wife is a thief...She takes the last cookieTakes forever to get readyShe takes her time in the showerTakes all of the hot waterShe takes my favorite seat on the couchTakes the high road when I lose controlMy wife is a thief...She took my last nameTook the time to get to know me, love meShe took the back seat and let me leadTook on motherhood and the emotional toll that it bringsShe took care of me the many times that I've gotten sickTook on the pain of pregnancy so that the Jackson legacy would live onMy wife takes, and takes, and takes...I'm so proud of my perpetual thief who stole my heart and won't give it back.

Many women experience a sense of pressure that men rarely do—the pressure to succeed at work and to keep things running smoothly at home, especially when children arrive on the scene.

Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying motherhood lacks meaning. There's great dignity in the smallness of motherhood; we're essential in our contingency. And though we may not follow the Western model of the epic hero, we mothers can find a metaphor for our lives. The metaphor is in the kuroko, the Kabuki theater stage assistant. You've heard of Kabuki—with its wildly theatrical actors, its gorgeous costumes, and spectacular scale. The kuroko are assistants who help the actors move through their elaborate dramas. Meant to provide unobtrusive assistance with props and costumes, kuroko try to remain in the wings. They huddle in half-kneeling posture, wearing black bags over their heads and bodies—the better to recede into both actors' and audience's preconscious mind. Scurrying to arrange the trailing hems of heavy brocade kimonos, like an American mother repeatedly straightening her daughter's wedding train, the kuroko's role is to suport the real players of life's dramas.

...Being a mother is like being a gardener of souls. You tend your children, make sure the light always touches them; you nourish them. You sow your seeds, and reap what you sow.

I'm two days away from day after tomorrowCounting the hours to my upcoming sorrow Suddenly I lookinto the eyes of my childThen all sadness goneas I smile the way she smiled

On becoming a mother, I had forever left that solitary state of girlhood behind, and if I sometimes pined to be alone with Augustine as we used to be in our first love, a quick glance at my sleeping son's face soon banished such foolish thoughts. It was as if Augustine and I had been in a beautiful bubble but when my body split open in childbirth, the shimmering membrane broke and we were delivered to the world.

Now in the thriving season of lovewhen the bud relents into flower,your love turned absence has turned once more,and if my comforts fall soft as rainon her flutters, it is becauselove grows by what it remembers of love

As if new motherhood isn't hard enough, you begin the hardest and most challenging weeks of your life physically and emotionally exhausted. Even if you manage to leave the hospital without physical scars or emotional wounds, you are probably exhausted and unsure of what to do. And then you are either thrown into a world where you need to get used to being out of work and home alone, or you need to figure out how to go back to work and be a mom at the same time. Or like many women, you find some new combination of the two that has no resemblance to your former life.

Even if i'm setting myself up for failure, I think it's worth trying to be a mother who delights in who her children are, in their knock-knock jokes and earnest questions. A mother who spends less time obseessing about what will happen, or what has happened, and more time reveling in what is. A mother who doesn't fret over failings and slights, who realizes her worries and anxieties are just thoughts, the continuous chattering and judgement of a too busy mind. A mother who doesn't worry so much about being bad or good but just recognizes that she's both, and neither. A mother who does her best, and for whom that is good enough, even if, in the end, her best turns out to be, simply, not bad.

One of the main functions of a push-up bra is to lower the number of mothers who seem like mothers.

The love between man and woman is a voluntary pact in which the one who falls short is only guilty of perfidy, but when a woman has become a mother her duty is greater because nature has entrusted the human species to her. If she fails then she is a coward, unworthy and infamous.

When we have the courage to claim space for ourselves. When we risk creativity. When we relish our sensuality. When we honor our lives and their experiences as valuable. When we create from a female body, expressing ourselves in a woman’s voice, using a woman’s language. We begin to bloom.

Anne looked at the white young mother with a certain awe that had never entered into her feelings for Diana before. Could this pale woman with the rapture in her eyes be the little black-curled, rosy-cheeked Diana she had played with in vanished schooldays? It gave her a queer desolate feeling that she herself somehow belonged only in those past years and had no business in the present at all.

Shonda, how do you do it all?The answer is this: I don't.Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life....That is the trade-off.That is the Faustian bargain one makes with the devil that comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. You never feel 100 percent okay, you never get your sea legs, you are always a little nauseous.

If we wear our nursing covers backwards like capes, then everyone can see we're breastfeeding superheroes.

She [my mother] was the force around which our world turned. My mother was propelled through the universe by the brute force of reason. She was the judge in all our arguments. One disapproving word from her was enough to send us off to hide in a corner, where we would cry and fantasize our own martyrdom. And yet. One kiss could restore us to princedom. Without her, our lives would dissolve into chaos.

Girls mature faster than boys, cost more to raise, and statistics show that the old saw about girls not knowing about money and figures is a myth. Girls start to outspend boys before puberty—and they manage to maintain this lead until death or an ugly credit manager, whichever comes first. Males are born with a closed fist. Girls are born with the left hand cramped in a position the size of an American Express card. Whenever a girl sees a sign reading, “Sale, Going Out of Business, Liquidation,” saliva begins to form in her mouth, the palms of her hands perspire and the pituitary gland says, “Go, Mama.” In the male, it is quite a different story. He has a gland that follows a muscle from the right arm down to the base of his billfold pocket. It's called “cheap.” Girls can slam a door louder, beg longer, turn tears on and off like a faucet, and invented the term, “You don't trust me.” So much for “sugar and spice and everything nice” and “snips and snails and puppydog tails.

However motherhood comes to you, it's a miracle.

I give praise and honor to the Holy one of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for the blessing of motherhood.

Yes it's true, you wake the child inside of you up because you're a Mom!

Regardless the destination, all roads lead home.

I wondered how long it took for a baby to become yours, for familiarity to set in. Maybe as long as it took a new car to lose that scent, or a brand-new house to gather dust. Maybe that was the process more commonly described as bonding: the act of learning your child as well as you know yourself.

Mothers always worry. There’s no off switch.

If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art of her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a standard for him against which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual impulses.

I try to feel my own edges in the low light. I send my mind to the outer edges of me — where do I end?I send myself to my innermost edges,and I see that in both directions I am infinite.

I think all mothers are alike, regardless of cultural background, when it comes to illogical cleaning.

Take a child away from a mother and she will bring the world to its knees for justice to be served.

Loving someone as fiercely as my mom loves me must be like wearing your heart outside of your body with no skin, no bones, no nothing to protect it.

...it was hard to be a mother when you had never been mothered yourself. Your children's needs remind you of your needs. Their pain reminds you of your pain. All of it reminds you of how bad it felt, how hard it was, how much you wanted and needed and didn't get. It's very hard.

I realized, listening to the silences that fell sometimes in my interview groups, that there are things that are sayable and unsayable about motherhood today. It is permissable, for example, to talk a lot about guilt, but not a lot about ambition. You can talk a lot about sex (or its lack) but not about the feelings that are keeping women from sleeping with their husbands. You can talk about society's lack of "appreciation" of mother's and the need for more social validation -- but not about policy that might actually make life better. You cannot really challenge the American culture of rugged individualism.