Best 779 quotes in «motherhood quotes» category

To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can imagine how this can exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.

Today in an auditorium full of parents my son scanned the room looking for me. When he saw me his face lit up the room. He wasn't looking for the perfect parent. He was looking for his mom. Don't ever forget the power of simply being their mom.

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

To her, not packing our lunches every day or joining the PTA is a feminist rallying cry.

tomorrow doesn't have to be like yesterday if you decide to change today.

Too many times I'd left him reaching for me, from a babysitter's arms. "Am I still a mother?" I asked myself... What parts of the day could I cut out and still give him enough? Paul never asked himself that. He thought he was a great dad.

Two Songs For The World's End I Bombs ripen on the leafless tree under which the children play. And there my darling all alone dances in the spying day. I gave her nerves to feel her pain, I put her mortal beauty on. I taught her love that hate might find, its black work the easier done. I sent her out alone to play; and I must watch, and I must hear, how underneath the leafless tree, the children dance and sing with Fear. II Lighted by the rage of time where the blind and dying weep, in my shadow take your sleep, though wakeful I. Sleep unhearing while I pray - Should the red tent of the sky fall to fold your time away, wake to weep before you die. Die believing all is true that love your maker said to you Still believe that had you lived you would have found love, world, sight, sound, sorrow, beauty - all true. Grieve for death your moment - grieve. The world, the lover you must take, is the murderer you will meet. But if you die before you wake never think death sweet.

WANTING to be anything is the whole point of feminism. HAVING TO BE SOMETHING is what feminists fight against, or at least the ones I know.

Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they chose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them.

Was it an instinct towards their future life together that she was already sensing, which made her pull back? For what she was seeing suddenly, in her mind’s eye, was an image of the two of them dancing on the edge of the world, not realising that they were about to fall off

We all know what we have to do what the inkling provokes us. We have to do the right thing. We have to make that extra push out of bed, or off the sofa. We must just do it.

We all have a reason for living I am blessed mine has two eyes a heartbeat and calls me mum.

We are all CONNECTED and I genuinely believe we should never stop absorbing knowledge from those around us. Observe: Gain from another’s experience. We all have something unique to share, so go out and engage the world with compassion, patience and generosity.

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.

We must accept what we are given, we do not have the power to change everything. Be Mindful. Be Present. Be Grateful.

We seem to feel as though the life our children have -- that we have built for them -- is just a delicate house of cards, held together by the most intricate balancing of all its carefully selected components, and that the slightest shock, the slightest jar to all our perfect orchestration, will bring the whole edifice crashing down.

We've never crossed paths before. I've never seen you walking down the street. I don't know the first thing there is to know about you. And the lines of my palm do not reveal nor disclose any untold secrets. Yet, here I am, holding the door as I whisper in your ear: "I'll be right across the street when you're done, my child.

We were immortal, did you know that? Did you feel it like me? We had the world at our feet and we were going to live forever. Then came life – growing inside you – and I became mortal.

What else is a child, but hope? Hope for the future, hope for one's own salvation, hope for a tomorrow that shines as bright and warm as the best yesterday you can remember.

What do you think was the first sound to become a word, a meaning?... I imagined two people without words, unable to speak to each other. I imagined the need: The color of the sky that meant 'storm.' The smell of fire taht meant 'Flee.' The sound of a tiger about to pounce. Who would worry about these things? And then I realized what the first word must have been: ma, the sound of a baby smacking its lips in search of her mother's breast. For a long time, that was the only word the baby needed. Ma, ma, ma. Then the mother decided that was her name and she began to speak, too. She taught the baby to be careful: sky, fire, tiger. A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.

What do you want to be?” “A mother,” I said simply, because it was true. That’s what I wanted first and foremost. “And a really excellent wife and partner. And homemaker. I want to have a family to take care of, to love and fuss over and think about. That’s what I want. I know it’s not progressive, or flashy, and I know people don’t place much importance on that stuff anymore, just like people don’t put much importance on humility and kindness, forgiveness and compassion. But those things are important to me. I know people will look down their noses at me for being just a mom, but I’m used to being marginalized for what I do and what I look like. And I think being a great mother is the most difficult and most important job in the world. So people can just take their judgmental crap and—

Whatever life brings, we'll share," she says, and "I can do no more than the best I can.

What grubworms women are to crawl on their bellies through colorless marriages! Marriage was created not to be a background but to need one. Mine is going to be outstanding. It can't, shan't be the setting--it's going to be the performance, the live, lovely, glamourous performance, and the world shall be the scenery. I refuse to dedicate my life to posterity. Surely one owes as much to the current generation as to one's unwanted children. What a fate--to grow rotund and unseemly, to lose my self-love, to think in terms of milk, oatmeal, nurse, diapers…. Dear dream children, how much more beautiful you are, dazzling little creatures who flutter (all dream children must flutter) on golden, golden wings-- --

What I’m asking is will watching The Discovery Channel with my young black boy instead of the news coverage of the riot funerals riot arrests riot nothing changes riots be enough to keep him from harm?

What is certain is that he [the baby] has too much attention from the one person who is entirely at his disposal. The intimacy between mother and child is not sustaining and healthy. The child learns to exploit his mother's accessibility, badgering her with questions and demands which are not of any real consequence to him, embarrassing her in public, blackmailing her into buying sweets and carrying him.

What is it about the relationship of a mother that can heal or hurt us? Her womb is the first landscape we inhabit. It is here we learn to respond - to move, to listen, to be nourished and grow. In her body we grow to be human as our tails disappear and our gills turn to lungs. Our maternal environment is perfectly safe - dark, warm, and wet. It is a residency inside the Feminine. When we outgrow our mother's body, our cramps become her own. We move. She labors. Our body turns upside down in hers as we journey through the birth canal. She pushes in pain. We emerge, a head. She pushes one more time, and we slide out like a fish. Slapped on the back by the doctor, we breath. The umbilical cord is cut - not at our request. Separation is immediate. A mother reclaims her body, for her own life. Not ours. Minutes old, our first death is our own birth.

What is success, after all, but doing what you really want to do?

What’s a mother for but to be blamed?

We have no children Harriet. Or, rather, I have no children. You have one child.

What you call your life is not yours at all--not yours to plan, manipulate, or control, at least not very often. . . . In fleeting moments of deep satisfaction and insight, I saw the absolute truth of life: the unbroken line of love that had led to my existence and would lead on through my daughter. My mother's love, her mother's love, her mother's love, and back and back forever ago. Love that is no mere word, love that goes beyond feeling, love that is life itself. . . . What miracles, what sacrifice, what love! . . . Can you imagine this love? Can you anticipate it, fabricate it, measure and evaluate it? No you can't, you can only be love, and your child will release its magnitude within you.

When a boy feels as if no one cares about him, or as if he will never amount to anything, he truly believes it doesn’t matter what he does.

When a mother elevates her communication, she naturally elevates the outcomes of her child's life since a mother's words become her child's universe of possibilities.

Vous travaillez pour l'armee, madame?' (You are working for the army?), a Frenchwoman said to me early in the Vietnam war, on hearing I had three sons.

When I complain about the bandages she says: 'I promise you that when you take them off you'll be just as you were before.' And it is true. When she takes them off there is not one line, not one wrinkle, not one crease. And five weeks afterwards there I am, with not one line, not one wrinkle, not one crease. And there he is, lying with a ticket tied around his wrist because he died in a hospital. And there I am looking down at him, without one line, without one wrinkle, without one crease...

--what's really unique about maternal anxiety today is our belief that if something goes wrong with or for our children, it's a reflection on us as mothers. Because we believe we should be able to control life so perfectly that we can keep bad things from happening.

What she was coming to realize, but what no woman was allowed to utter aloud, was that there was no guarantee your child would be adequate compensation for the life you gave up to have it. More and more, life looked an awful lot like a hoax perpetrated on women and designated to further men’s lives at the expense of their own.

When I tried to meet some impossible standard for motherhood, tried to earn my way to a weird sort of Proverbs 31 Woman Club, I collapsed in exhaustion and simmering anger, sadness, and failure. This was not life in the Vine, this exhausting job description; this was not the Kingdom of God, let alone a redeemed woman living full. This was the shell of someone trying to measure up, trying to earn through her mothering what God had already freely given. This was someone feeling the weight of unmet expectations from the Church and her own self and the world all at once.

When I had those small children, I didn't have to go out and meet people. I can create my own mood at home with my children," she said. "It creates balance for me somehow.

When I was a kid my mom would send me off to school each day with the words, ‘Remember: be happy! The most important thing today is that you are happy!

When Aziza first spotted Mariam in the morning, her eyes always sprang open, and she began mewling and squirming in her mother's grip. She thrust her arms toward Mariam, demanding to be held, her tiny hands opening and closing urgently, on her face a look of both adoration and quivering anxiety. "What a scene you're making," Laila would say, releasing her to crawl toward Mariam. "What a scene! Calm down. Khala Mariam isn't going anywhere. There she is, your aunt. See? Go on, now." As soon as she was in Mariam's arms, Aziza's thumb shot into her mouth and she buried her face in Mariam's neck. Mariam bounced her stiffly, a half-bewildered, half-grateful smile on her lips. Mariam had never before been wanted like this. Love had never been declared to her so guilelessly, so unreservedly. Aziza made Mariam want to weep. "Why have you pinned your little heart to an old, ugly hag like me?" Mariam would murmur into Aziza's hair. "Huh? I am nobody, don't you see? A dehati. What have I got to give you?" But Aziza only muttered contentedly and dug her face in deeper. And when she did that, Mariam swooned. Her eyes watered. Her heart took flight. And she marvelled at how, after all these years of rattling loose, she had found in this little creature the first true connection in her life of false, failed connections.

When I was a newly single mom with a toddler and a newborn, I’d cringe when meeting new people, especially other young parents, none of whom seemed to be anything but blissfully orbiting in their nuclear family unit. I’d dance around any pressures (perceived or real) to reveal my marital status, until I’d burst, and a flood of unprompted details would pour out: “I’m-separated-yes-your-math-is-right-my-ex-moved-out-while-Iwas-pregnant-but-he-had-a-brain-injury-and-destabalized-so-it-is-an-unusual-situation-a-medical-crisis-he’sactually-a-very-good-person-I’m-not-angry-about-that-we-are-all-fine!

When I wasn’t in the barn garden, helping out, sorting seeds or checking hoses I’d spend time alone, usually in the bathroom adjacent to Joel’s room, staring into the shattered mirror as my hand gently caressed my baby bump. More often than not I would cry. Not because my pregnancy upset me, or that my hormones were getting the better of me, but because I missed Joel, my baby’s father. That the baby would grow up without a dad made me anxious. Then again, if he had survived, what irreparable damage would he have suffered and how would his pain translate to his child? Jesus, I was studying myself in the very mirror he’d smashed the night he chose to take his own life. The bump had grown slowly in the last couple of months. With these limited resources, I didn’t have the privilege of eating whatever I craved. Had that been the case, I was sure I would have been bigger by now. Still, I tried to eat as well and as often as I could and the size of my belly had proven that my attempts at proper nutrition were at least growing something in there. Nothing made me happier than feeling my baby move. It was a constant source of relief for me. In our present circumstances, with no vitamins and barely any meat products save the recent stash of jerky Earl had found in an abandoned trailer, my diet consisted of berries, lettuce, and canned beans for the most part. Feeling the baby move inside me was an experience I often enjoyed alone. I would think of Joel then as well. Imagining his hand on my belly, with mine guiding his to the kicks and punches.

When someone dies they can be any age you remember can't they ' she asked. As I tried to think of a reply she continued 'You probably think about the grown-up Tess because you were still close to her. But when I woke up I thought of her when she was three wearing a fairy skirt I'd got her in the Woolworth's and a policeman's helmet. Her wand was a wooden spoon. On the bus yesterday I imagined holding her when she was two days old. I felt the warmth of her. I remembered all her fingers clasped around my finger so tiny they didn't even meet. I remembered the shape of her head and stroking the nape of her neck till she slept. I remembered her smell. She smelled of innocence. Other times she's thirteen and so pretty that I worry for her everytime I see a man look at her. All of those Tesses is my daughter.

When she reached out to the little girl in her, nothing erupted but the dense muteness of her own children in her belly. She felt helpless, alienated from her mirror-image, perceiving her body as a shallow vessel, possessed by human beings that she never met, draining her energy and suppressing her proper self, which she considered absent again.

When the whole world made me think that, I can't do it, Thanks for making me, believe that, I can do it.

When I was younger, I use to laugh at my mom when she was silly. Now that I'm older, I find myself just as silly as her. Thanks mom, for teaching us that even as adults, it's OK to be fun and enjoy life laughing. I now get to teach my nephews and stepdaughter the same thing.

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.

When the last woman dies, the last man dies!

When you go into labor you see that you are not the captain of the ship. You are the ship. There is no captain. There are only the waves.

When you have done all that you can do, A true Mother will always stick by you. You may think sometimes that she is rude. She has to be because this world can be crude.