This weekend is Mother’s Day and it’s a sweet holiday for those of us in mommy-land. My world of construction paper cards and hand-made gifts is still alive and active, and I’m grateful for extra squeezes or kisses that are thrown my way.
But this post is a love-letter to all the fellow mommas that are out there. I appreciate your wisdom and your hard work. When you model love & respect with your kiddos, it encourages me. When you laugh with your loved ones or tell stories about the humor in it all, it inspires me. When you show your grit and have to do the heart-wrenching dirty work (like leaving the grocery store with a half-full cart after an epic meltdown), you make me feel a sense of “I’m not alone.” Motherhood is a place where I readily acknowledge that I too am being stretched and squeezed in new and different ways. And it’s so nice to have such a lovely community of people to share in this hard work. Thank you, mommas.
If you are a mom, if you are a step-mom, an auntie, a “like-a-mom,” a kind & generous neighbor, a heart-warming church-goer that smiles at all the kids in your pew, if you are a grandmother or a generous caregiver, if you nanny or baby-sit, if you act as a surrogate mom, if you have a furry friend or a feathered friend that you are mom to, if you’ve adopted, if you’ve dreamed of one day having a child, if you tend a garden like a mother, and every possible Mom-like individual on the planet, I want you to feel the love on this holiday. Because this is a holiday to celebrate the love of a mother.
And I hope that each of us can think of a handful of “moms” that give this title a grand connotation–one of kindness, nurturing, support and unconditional love.
As you go about your work of mothering, I hope you feel camaraderie. I hope you feel a sense of something bigger. This tending of loved ones is hard work and the accolades can sometimes come infrequently. But for all of us out there, making lunches and matching socks (are there any of those kinds of moms left?), running herd and shuttling the mom-bus, let’s give each other a high five and celebrate all this parenting we do.
This is me, sending all of you gentle thoughts of love and community. Keep on doing this hard work, mommas. It’s inspiring!
Human School 