Mothers

Motherhood. In all it's glory, we know what we know because of our own mothers.

I think of motherhood like a torch being passed down throughout the generations. Great-grandmother to grandmother. Grandmother to Mother to at last, me, us, the new mothers of the current generation. When my son was born I was inheriting more than my first born. I was inheriting the wisdom of a great lineage of women whose intuition and inner knowing guide me on how to care for my child.

Although these women don't literally hand us the recipe for maternal intuition on a crinkled, folded up peice of paper, we inherit the knowledge of their lives and become great mothers by watching, seeing, doing. We successfully change a diaper on the first try, feed our baby before they become destressed and tend to our child's high fever with love, calmness, devotion. We are, as our mother's before us were, wisdom holders. The secret to motherhood is passed down, until it reaches us. No matter what self-doubts may at times challenge us, at the very core of our being is the mother that knows what to do.

My own mother was --- and is to this day --- unconditional in her love for me, in her patience as I learn the lessons I'm meant to learn, humorous (her high pitched laugh is and will always be contagious) and gracious, even throughout the darkest times of her life, and mine.

She passed along the torch to me, and now I know that becoming a mother to my baby means I already love him uncontionally, I allow him to live the lessons he is meant to live, and if I am lucky, perhaps one day I will inherit that wonderfully infectious laughter of hers.