Motherhood Quotes - Page 12

What is so real as the cry of a child?A rabbit's cry may be wilderBut it has no soul.

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.

Jodi Picoult

And a mother without children is not a mother at all, and if I am not a mother, than I am nothing. Nothing. I am like sugar dissolved in a glass of water. Or, I am like salt, which disappears when you cook with it. I am salt. Without my children, I cease to exist.

Thrity Umrigar

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.

Jodi Picoult

It's come at last", she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.

Betty Smith

Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did - that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that - a parent's heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.

Debra Ginsberg

In a child's eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe.

N K Jemisin

Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger's touch. But when you live with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-cheeked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips sink down and seem never to find bone. Holding them against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back into your body.But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says "I am," and forms the core of personality.In the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And "I am" grows, too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh.The bones of the face emerge at six, and the soul within is fixed at seven. The process of encapsulation goes on, to reach its peak in the glossy shell of adolescence, when all softness then is hidden under the nacreous layers of the multiple new personalities that teenagers try on to guard themselves.In the next years, the hardening spreads from the center, as one finds and fixes the facets of the soul, until "I am" is set, delicate and detailed as an insect in amber.

Diana Gabaldon

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

Melissa B. Kruger

A good mother does not live only for her children. She always has some bond with other mothers, no matter what class, nationality or race they may be. All mothers have the same joys, the same sorrows, the same anxieties. All mothers think first of their child and of children.

Werenfried Von Straaten

She had had her momentary flowering, a year, perhaps, of wildrose beauty, and then she had suddenly swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard and red and coarse, and then her life had been laundering, scrubbing, laundering, first for children, then for grandchildren, over thirty years. At the end of it she was still singing.

George Orwell

It's 5:22pm you're in the grocery checkout line. Your three-year-old is writhing on the floor, screaming, because you have refused to buy her a Teletubby pinwheel. Your six-year-old is whining, repeatedly, in a voice that could saw through cement, "But mommy, puleeze, puleeze" because you have not bought him the latest "Lunchables," which features, as the four food groups, Cheetos, a Snickers, Cheez Whiz, and Twizzlers. Your teenager, who has not spoken a single word in the past foor days, except, "You've ruined my life," followed by "Everyone else has one," is out in the car, sulking, with the new rap-metal band Piss on the Parentals blasting through the headphones of a Discman. To distract yourself, and to avoid the glares of other shoppers who have already deemed you the worst mother in America, you leaf through People magazine. Inside, Uma thurman gushes "Motherhood is Sexy." Moving on to Good Housekeeping, Vanna White says of her child, "When I hear his cry at six-thirty in the morning, I have a smile on my face, and I'm not an early riser." Another unexpected source of earth-mother wisdom, the newly maternal Pamela Lee, also confides to People, "I just love getting up with him in the middle of the night to feed him or soothe him." Brought back to reality by stereophonic whining, you indeed feel as sexy as Rush Limbaugh in a thong.

Susan Douglas

Motherhood by definition means a journey into the depths of one’s possibility.

H.L. Balcomb

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.

Lucy H. Pearce

If you have no armsTo hold your crying child but your own armsAnd no legs but your own to run the stairs one more timeTo fetch what was forgottenI bow to youIf you have no vehicleTo tote your wee one but the wheels that you driveAnd no one else to worry, “Is my baby okay?”When you have to say goodbye on the doorsteps of daycareor on that cursed first day of schoolI bow to youIf you have no skill but your own skillTo replenish an ever-emptying bank accountAnd no answers but your own toSatisfy the endless whys, hows, and whens your child asks and asks againI bow to youIf you have no tongue to tell the truthTo keep your beloved on the path without a precipiceAnd no wisdom to impartExcept the wisdom that you’ve acquiredI bow to youIf the second chair is emptyAcross the desk from a scornful, judging authority waitingFor your child’s father to appearAnd you straighten your spine where you sitAnd manage to smile and say, “No one else is coming—I’m it.”Oh, I bow to youIf your head aches when the spotlight finally shineson your child because your hands are the only hands there to applaudI bow to youIf your heart aches because you’ve given until everything in you is goneAnd your kid declares, “It’s not enough.”And you feel the crack of your own soul as you whisper,“I know, baby. But it’s all mama’s got.”Oh, how I bow to youIf they are your life while you are their nurse, tutor, maidBread winner and bread baker,Coach, cheerleader and teammate…If you bleed when your child falls downI bow, I bow, I bowIf you’re both punisher and huggerAnd your own tears are drowned out by the running of the bathroom faucetbecause children can’t know that mamas hurt tooOh, mother of mothers, I bow to you.—Toni Sorenson

Toni Sorenson

It takes a tremendous amount of strength to be a single mother. To hold down the forte of a home, a life and your child's entire happiness.

Nikki Rowe

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

Nikki Rowe

My arrivalHer womb’s delightHer existenceMy living lightHer woundsMy scarsHer skiesMy starsHer daysMy hoursHer strengthMy powersI breathe my name Being her childWithout motherLife’s beguiledFrom the poem 'Mother

Munia Khan

Maybe this is a second doctoral program: advanced learning about life, death, marriage, mothering, family, faith, patience, prayer. My degree will be 'Doctor of Life,' and I will be in good company. So many of us earn our 'Doctor of Life' degrees.

Christina G. Hibbert Psy.D.

Because what my gradmother did with her fine coat (the loveliest thing she would ever own) is what all women of that generation (and before) did for their families and their husbands and their children. They cut up the finest and proudest parts of themselves and gave it all away. They repatterned what was theirs and shaped it for others. They went without. They were the last ones to eat at supper, and they were the first ones to get up every morning, warming the cold kitchen for another day spent caring for everyone else. This was the only thing they knew how to do. This was their guiding verb and their defining principle of life: They gave.

Elizabeth Gilbert

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

Victoria Ward

The Astors and the Vanderbilts, their pleasure domes and money: she was sick of it. Sick of envying, sick of herself. She didn't understand antiques or architecture, she couldn't draw like Sylvia, she didn't read like Ted, she had few interests and no expertise. A paucity for love was the only true thing she'd ever had.

Jonathan Franzen

It was deflating to realize how much my own family's quality of life might improve if I replaced myself with a Fundamentalist stay-at-home daughter.

Quinn Cummings

She [my mother] tapped my hand lightly with her fingers and, looking out the window, said, "You know, I've missed having a mother. It's a gaping hole. I think having a mother is one of the great things in life--one of the only things that can save you. I'm always looking for my mother and, frankly, Kitten, it's becoming exhausting, so I thought I'd ask you if you would be my mother. You just have that way about you. You're not really what anyone would call a typical daughter, but I think you have exactly what it takes to be a mother. Don't you think it's a good idea?

Kate Mulgrew

There is only one thing worse than a little baby who won't stop crying: it is a big baby who won't stop whining about it

Agona Apell

Raising human offspring is an endeavor nothing less than a continued labor of patience, hard work, organization and ongoing adaptation. All of which is unlike that expected of any other living creatures on the planet (or this sector of the universe, as far as we can tell). It demands the most complex responsibility and long-term commitment of any parenting life-form. Indeed, it is at times, at least for quality parents, an overwhelming, exhausting, even daunting task. Albeit, one that in the end, (and, most of the time even in the middle of it), is more than worth it.

Connie Kerbs

Motherhood (and fatherhood) is one of the most important, while at the same time being one of the most long-time, unappreciated roles we may ever find ourselves in. Add to that, it seems at times to be taken as much for granted by our society at large, as by the developing young we pour our all into. Quality parenting is also wrought with joy and satisfaction at every turn, being one of the most rewarding, and fulfilling experiences we have the opportunity to know in this thing we call the human condition.

Connie Kerbs

The first time you see your grown-up little miss looking back at you from a sea of white chiffon or beaded satin glory, indeed your heart will skip a beat. You’ll find yourself blinking back tears. That elusive someday has suddenly become now. Your little girl—your jewel—is going to be a bride.

Cheryl Barker

Let go of your daughter with grace and you'll find her calling on you with joy.

Cheryl Barker

You’ve spent her whole life holding her. Whether cradled in your arms as a baby or wrapped in your embrace as a young woman, she’s been yours to have and to hold, Mother of the Bride—until now. Now the time has come to let her go, to let herbegin her own family and pledge her allegiance to another.

Cheryl Barker

It’s time to stop dreaming about who you want your son to be and help him become the healthy, happy, and successful man he’s supposed to be.

Clayton Lessor MA

Healing, it turns out, is a journey. It doesn’t happen all at once.

Clayton Lessor MA

My mother had been in the Soviet whirlpool for eleven years by this point. Enough time, I imagine, to unlearn the bourgeois habits of her native Brooklyn, to accustom herself to the farting and shouting of her neighbours, to doing her washing by hand in the collective tub, to keeping her dry food locked up in her wardrobe

Sana Krasikov

Healthy boys grow into healthy men.

Clayton Lessor MA

According to most studies on the subject, boys who grow up without fathers grow up at a disadvantage.

Clayton Lessor MA

Teaching a boy to be a man is the primary job of a father.

Clayton Lessor MA

There’s a wound most troubled boys share, which, at its core, comes from the feeling that they don’t have their father’s unconditional love.

Clayton Lessor MA

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.

Clayton Lessor MA

Despite what you might believe right now, your son’s future is bright. You only need the right tools to help him get there.

Clayton Lessor MA

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.

Carl Busby Sr

There are many memories. but I'll tell you the one I like to think of best of all. It's just a homely everyday thing, but to me it is the happiest of them all. It is evening time here in the old house and the supper is cooking and the table is set for the whole family. It hurts a mother, Laura, when the plates begin to be taken away one by one. First there are seven and then six and then five...and on down to a single plate. So I like to think of the table set for the whole family at supper time. The robins are singing in the cottonwoods and the late afternoon sun is shining across the floor... The children are playing out in the yard. I can hear their voices and happy laughter. There isn't much to that memory is there? Out of a lifetime of experiences you would hardly expect that to be the one I would choose as the happiest, would you? But it is.

Bess Streeter Aldrich

Whosoever does not believe in the existence of a sixth sense has clearly not regarded their own mother. How it is they know all they know about you, even those secrets you locked away so tightly in the most hidden compartments of your heart, remains one of the great mysteries of the world. And they don't just know—they know instantly.

Narissa Doumani

Leah: I want those gubs Mommy.Kate: They're not 'gubs' they're 'gloves'Aaden and Leah try and say glovesLeah: Gloves!Kate: Good job!Aaden: Gubs!Kate: No

Kate Gosselin

Imagine that the world had created a new 'dream product' to feed and immunize everyone born on earth. Imagine also that it was available everywhere, required no storage or delivery, and helped mothers plan their families and reduce the risk of cancer. Then imagine that the world refused to use it.

Frank A. Oski

The terrible things that happen to us in life never make any sense when we're in the middle of them, floundering, no end in sight. There is no rope to hang on to, it seems. Mothers can soothe children during those times, through their reassurance. No one worries about you like your mother, and when she is gone, the world seems unsafe, things that happen unwieldy. You cannot turn to her anymore, and it changes your life forever. There is no one on earth who knew you from the day you were born; who knew why you cried, or when you'd had enough food; who knew exactly what to say when you were hurting; and who encouraged you to grow a good heart. When that layer goes, whatever is left of your childgood goes with her. Memories are very different and cannot soothe you the same way her touch did.

Adriana Trigiani

Bless your mum, who carried you for nine months in her womb.

Lailah Gifty Akita

I’m trying to figure out if you know something that I don’t, or if you’re really this stupid. You might be older and therefore a lot stronger than I am, Sphinx, but I am a mother and a lot more pissed off than you.

S.R. Crawford

For men, the answer was always the same and never farther away than the nearest sword. For a woman, a mother, the way was stonier and harder to know.

George R.R. Martin

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.

H.L. Balcomb

She also understood there was a hole in her heart where her son should be, that she was a wicked, selfish woman for wishing him back.

Shannon Celebi

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.

Tiffany Dufu

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

Abby Fabiaschi

Book club meets every other month or so. Besides marriage counseling and the very occasional night out with my sister, I’m home twenty-nine nights out of thirty, and still the girls resent me. Not once have they ever complained about Adam’s late meetings—which may or may not have been booty calls for amazing porno sex. Me, I go out to my stupid book club, and I’m punished for it.

Kristan Higgins

she was wishing that whatever stage of her life she was in now could be got through quickly, for it was seeing to her interminable. If life had to be looked at in terms of high moments. or peaks, then nothing had "happened" to her for a long time; snd she could look forward to nothing much but a dwindling away from full household activity into getting old

Doris Lessing

Tired as I was of conflict, I felt that I must not shrink from the fight, nor abandon in cowardice the attempt to prove, as no theories could ever satisfactorily prove without examples, that marriage and motherhood need never tame the mind, nor swamp and undermine ability and training, nor trammel and domesticise political perception and social judgement. Today, as never before, it was urgent for individual women to show that life was enriched, mentally and spiritually as well as physically and socially, by marriage and children; that these experiences rendered the woman who accepted them the more and not the less able to take the world's pulse, to estimate its tendencies, to play some definite, hard-headed, hard-working part in furthering the constructive ends of a political civilisation

Vera Brittain

I'm getting stale. I always do this time of year. I keep my nose to the grindestone and put in long hours and rustle up good meals and do all the chores and run errands and get along with people -- and have a fine time doing it and enjoy life. Then I realize, bang, that I'm tired and I don't want to wait on my family for a while and I wish I could go away somewhere and have people wait on me hand and foot, and dress up and go to restaurants and the theater and act like a woman of the world. I feel as if I'd been swallowed up whole by all these powerful DeVotos and I'd like to be me for a while with somebody who never heard the name.

Joan Reardon

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.

Suzy Kassem

I was unhappy there and going through a rough transition, so I was desperate for any friend I could find that I could talk to. I thought that's what he was. We had this secret from my mom, who I didn't like much at the time. It was a harmless secret, so I didn't feel bad about it. All we did was go to the movies and hang out doing fun things all day. It wasn't until much later that the warning signs began, but I was still too young and stupid to see them for what they were at the time. Basically, he was patient as he built up the trust between us. He became a close friend and convinced me that he was on my side somehow. He took total advantage of my ignorance and totally betrayed me a few years later, when he slept with me. After my mom found out, she went psychotic and all she gave a fuck about was what had been done to her. She didn't care about anything except for how hurt she was by what had happened. She blamed me and him equally, telling me that sixteen years old was old enough to know better. Even though I never initiated a goddamn thing with him, and never would have. Even though it happened in the apartment she and I had gotten together, that he was not supposed to be staying in.

Ashly Lorenzana

Grief is shameless; it refuses to be ignored. If you let it have its way, it becomes fatal. If you try to remove it piece by piece, it only multiplies like a tumor. And if you try to fight it, it becomes like quicksand; you try to claw your way back to the surface, and for a second you feel the fresh air against your face, thinking you've survived, only to be pulled fiercely back down again, swallowed whole, nothing left.

Zeina Kassem

I wish I had lost an arm or a leg. It would have been much easier than losing a part of my heart, which lives on, but now beats to a different rhythm.

Zeina Kassem

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Motherhood Quotes - Page 12

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