Motherhood Quotes - Page 2

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.

Jerusalem Jackson Greer

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.

Judith Warner

As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits.

Catherynne M. Valente

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn't interest you, don't do it - I would have made a terrible mother.

Katharine Hepburn

I would keep her, and raise her, and love her, even if she had to teach me how to do it.

Vanessa Diffenbaugh

A loose end - that's what we woman call it, when we are overwhelmed by the care of small children, the weight of small tasks, a life in which we fall into bed at the end of the day exhausted from being all things to all people.

Anna Quindlen

there is still a kind of unique loneliness to child rearing for women. We so often do it in isolation. Add to the fact that in our competitive, perfectionist culture, in which the price woman are required to pay for freedom still seems to be martyrdom, almost everyone lies about motherhood. Part of that lying is loyalty - I can't let on that my kid is the only one on the playground who can't read or play the piano - and part of it is self-protection, since we've made hyper-motherhood a measure of female success. The preferred answer to the question "How are you?" is always "Fine," and the answer to the question "How are the kids?" is supposed to be "Great!" That's true even if the accurate answers would be "terrible" and "a mess." I think it produces its own kind of desperation, especially for women, who yearn to be emotionally open.

Anna Quindlen

I watched her with the crab as she ignored all my admonitions that the poor crab just needed to be set free if he was to have any chance of surviving. And God showed up there on that beach to teach me a lesson. Nothing survives when it's being smothered. Life, real life, requires being free to move about in the great big ocean, not being cradled in little hot hands that will stifle independence and creativity. We can't keep our crabs (or our kids) in a bucket and expect them to go far in life.

Melanie Shankle

For the most part, each day listed a different rendition of "Justin ate well" and "Justin took a great nap". Every now and then they noted Justin doing unusual things, like biting. I was embarrassed to read "Justin is biting his friends again" or "Justin did better with biting and only bit one boy". Other than that, though, my son was a pretty happy-go-lucky kid.

Pattie Mallette

Each woman must realize that she is the final guardian of her unborn child.

Susan McCutcheon

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.

George Bernard Shaw

Maybe she’d always wished to be beautiful and didn’t quite dare to, because she could tell that people didn’t say she was and more attention was given to other women, but she still had a frail hope that there’d been a mistake and she was after all.

Mona Simpson

On first hearing that little voice – as fine and friable, I felt, as cotton thread, the impact on my soul was that of the highest magnitude of earthquake, those that occur every hundred years, say, or every thousand. The old shell I called myself cracked and was swallowed by a sudden crevasse, and just as suddenly was lost in the commotion.

Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Delirious as it can be, sex is only one kind of intimacy, and yet has become the cultural catchment area for all kinds of needs because our understanding of intimacy is so poor. Brutal work schedules, related geographic isolation, and the concomitant fracturing of families has meant that there is little time for intimacy, and even less to teach the necessary skills. But intimacy, the axis of romance, is slow, based on the sharing of a life rather than show. In terms of intimacy, folding laundry together or sharing the feeding of a child can have more impact than the most extravagant bouquet.

Antonella Gambotto-Burke

I think women should have choices and should be able to do what they like, and I think it's a great choice to stay at home and raise kids, just as it's a great choice to have a career. But I don't entirely approve of people who get advanced degrees and then decide to stay at home. I think if society gives you the gift of one of those educations and you take a spot in a very competitive institution, then you should do something with that education to help others... But I also don't approve of working parents who look down on stay-at-home mothers and think they smother their children. Working parents are every bit as capable of spoiling children as ones who don't work - maybe even more so when they indulge their kids out of guilt. The best think anyone can teach their children is the obligation we all have toward each other - and no one has a monopoly on teaching that.

Will Schwalbe

Women are like trees, growing slowly over time. So many rings creating layers of maturity as their branches spread and reach out to the sky. Motherhood prunes those branches. Sometimes it prunes them back hard and painfully. But if you let go and trust in the good of what it means to be a mother, if you can trust in the knowledge learned from the hard lessons, then faith and belief will carry you through. And in the end, you will grow fuller and more beautiful from the, sometimes harsh, pruning of motherhood.

P.R. Newton

Suddenly, as they walked with their buckets, it was not the child in each face that she sought, but the Wonder that had raised itself on to its two feet, that had learnt to walk, to run, that had spoken, that had got in touch with life under her hand.

Enid Bagnold

The children seemed to cast their Precursors like shadows about the house, sometimes tangibly, in the sound of a voice, sometimes by suggestion, because it was striking the hour for their return from a walk, sometimes mysteriously, because inside the shell of their mother's head the children were painted like angels on the roof of a chapel.

Enid Bagnold

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

Tanya Masse

We watched each other evolve into parents, with all the fear, rage and confusion evolution can involve. Our eight-year-old is the incarnation of our union; we are forever fused by her blood. My old take on romance seemed vaguely ludicrous, as affected as a pair of spats. I no longer saw the point in 'getting back to normal', that pantomime of pretending nothing had changed; I wanted to evolve from sexual posturing into a deeper consciousness, that of love.

Antonella Gambotto-Burke

First rule of motherhood, dearie: men are screw-ups. Learn it now and you'll be a whole lot happier.

Neal Shusterman

A mother's love, it knows no end. It begins with a dream, with a silent wish, and it never ever ends.

Kelly DeBie

SHE holds the hand to help you in your First Step,She is your First Teacher,SHE holds your hand when You Fall Down,SHE is the one who guides you in Life,SHE hides you from all Trouble,SHE is sometime Mentor,SHE even nurses you when you Fall ill,SHE gives you the confidence,SHE never give False Appreciation,SHE is the one who will scold you the most on your mistake,She is the one who even Fight for you when you are right,SHE is the one who believes in you when others do not,SHE is the one who Loves you even if You don't love her,SHE is the one who gave you LIFE,Do You know Who is 'SHE'??'SHE' is Mother your own MOM...

Debolina Bhawal

And I always say that to the children: “You are the greatest thing I ever did in my life!

Dave Isay

They lay together like a word and a comma, asleep within an unfinished sentence.

Patricia Storace

Now that Olive was grown, I didn't know what to do with myself. You could build your life around one single thing, like a view or a child, but that was risky. You had so much to lose.

Michael Lee West

Sadie heard her inside cleaning up the kitchen and wondered what dreams Betty's mother had for herself, if all mothers had them, bottled up beneath their mother exteriors.

Karen Brown

This is the book, then , and the book of Shakespeare. And every day you must read a page of each to your child--even though you yourself do not understand what is written down and cannot sound the words properly. You must do this that the child will grow up knowing of what is great---knowing that these tenements of Williamsburg are not the whole world."Katie: " The Protestant Bible and Shakespeare.

Betty Smith

The Mother Of GodThe threefold terror of love; a fallen flareThrough the hollow of an ear;Wings beating about the room;The terror of all terrors that I boreThe Heavens in my womb.Had I not found content among the showsEvery common woman knows,Chimney corner, garden walk,Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothesAnd gather all the talk?What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,This fallen star my milk sustains,This love that makes my heart's blood stopOr strikes a sudden chill into my bonesAnd bids my hair stand up?

W.B. Yeats

Mothers should negotiate between nations. Mothers of fighting countries would agree: Stop this killing now. Stop it now.

Yoshikani Taki

Is she a good baby? People would ask me. Well, no, I'd say.That swirl of hair on the back of her head. We must have taken a thousand pictures of it.

Jenny Offill

Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body

Elizabeth Stone

I can imagine no heroism greater than motherhood.

Lance Conrad

Fear not, the time is comingFear not, your bones are strongFear not, help is nearbyFear not, Gula is nearFear not, the baby is at the doorFear not, he will live to bring you honorFear not, the hands of the midwife are cleverFear not, the earth is beneath you Fear not, we have water and saltFear not, little motherFear not, mother of us all

Anita Diamant

In most families, care-giving becomes the woman's responsibility. While care-giving can enrich you, it can also deplete you if you don't have support or make time for self care.

Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett

I've been melted into somethingtoo easy to spill. I make moreand more of myself in orderto make more and more of the baby. He takes it, this making. And somehowhe's made more of me, too.

Brenda Shaughnessy

She felt a lump form in her throat, and she swallowed hard. She wouldn't have this-the swollen ankles and pink cheeks and the feel of that glorious, curving belly under the palm of her hand-but she could still be a mother. That was the important thing.

Sarah Pekkanen

Sometimes being a MOM is like a good ol’ country song! You lose your sleep, you lose your hair, you lose your patience, you lose your energy, you lose your memory AND you lose your SANITY! But you DO IT all for LOVE!

Tanya Masse

Her time has come," answered Miss Lizzie. "That's why I didn't marry Harvey - long ago when he asked me. I was afraid of 'that'. So afraid." "I don't know," Miss Lizzie said. "Sometimes I think it's better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than just to be safe." She waited until the next scream died away. "At least she knows she's living.

Betty Smith

One very important key to maintaining our daily sanity is a simple scheduling tactic I call Putting Things the Hell Off.

Ian Frazier

It is an oyster, with small shells clinging to its humped back. Sprawling and uneven, it has the irregularity of something growing. It looks rather like the house of a big family, pushing out one addition after another to hold its teeming life - here a sleeping porch for the children, and there a veranda for the play-pen; here a garage for the extra car and there a shed for the bicycles. It amuses me because it seems so much like my life at the moment, like most women's lives in the middle years of marriage. It is untidy, spread out in all directions, heavily encrusted with accumulations....

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

But would I have chosen to be Paul? I'd miss Will too much, the feel of his shins.

Mona Simpson

I prayed in silence that perhaps even now, the queen might have a son and might know joy like this, such a strange, unexpected joy- the happiness of caring for a child whose whole life was in my hands.

Philippa Gregory

When you're a passenger on an airplane, you are told that in the event of a change in cabin pressure, you should put your mask on first and then assist your children. You can't help them if you are unconscious. A similar principle applies with your day to day health. Mothers tend to put others first. While this is admirable in one sense, it is not a good practice in the long run. You cannot strike a balance between your needs and the needs of your family if you are constantly run down. Stop abusing your body.

Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett

Isolation can be a particular problem for mothers at home with small children. Mothers become isolated from each other because we fear judgement. Other mothers can be our harshest critics. And we anticipate that criticism and don't ask each other for help.

Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett

Burnout can be defined as a loss of enthusiasm, energy, idealism, perspective, and purpose; it has been described as trying to run a marathon at full speed. It's often the mothers who care the most who are the most prone to burnout.

Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett

Our culture sends some amazingly contradictory messages about what an ideal mother is like. Mothers try to live up to these ideals without recognizing the contradictions or the improbability of the task. As mothers, you are often expected to have a fulfilling career, time for personal interests, a rewarding marriage, involvement in your communities, a thorough grasp of current events - and be able to provide baked goods at a moment's notice.

Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett

Being mom is one of my favorite things. It makes my day watching my kids grow and accomplish things in their lives.

Amanda Penland

Just as there is no warning for childbirth, there is no preparation for the sight of a first child... There should be a song for women to sing at this moment, or a prayer to recite. But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name the moment.

Anita Diamant

Because I'm your mother, that's why.

Leslye Walton

The journey of motherhood centers on being the person God has chosen out of all humanity and space and time to care for these souls, these beings who will exist for all eternity.

Rachel Balducci

Some women are born mothers, some women become mothers, and some have motherhood thrust upon them. I struggled against it all my life, but I think the truth is I was probably born to it. I don't do badly, I don't do well, I just do it.

Fay Weldon

Being a mother gives you a singular sort of vision, a prism through which you can see your child with many different faces all at once. It is the reason you can watch him shatter a ceramic lamp, and still remember him as an angel.

Jodi Picoult

It had been six weeks since I brought my second child, my daughter, kicking and screaming into the world. Six weeks, that magic number men everywhere look forward to and women dread.

Julia Arnold

Being a mother must be the saddest yet the most hopeful thing in the world, falling into a love that, once started, would never end.

Yiyun Li

H.L. Mencken once said that Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having a good time. As she looked down at her dead child, Mary Beth realized that the unbearable sense of loss she felt was tempered by gratitude and a kind of relief. There would be no more boyfriends now, no more weekend parties. Ruby would remain pure forever, and for that her mother was deeply grateful. Catholicism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be having a good time . . . with your daughter.

Anna Quindlen

In the space of his years, my body had taken its full shape and my heart had grown in wisdom, for I understood what it was to be a mother.

Anita Diamant The Red Tent

Motherhood is a constant battle of going to bed early so you can catch up on sleep and staying awake so you can enjoy some peace and sanity!

Tanya Masse

whoever has grown without a mother has missed half of his/her lifetime

HPM

Breastfeeding is a beautiful thing, one of the most beautiful things that exist in nature. Think about how a woman can literally feed her baby with her body! In my eyes, this is a certain form of beauty, of divinity! To know that my body can not only form and bring another human being into the world, but that I can actually feed babies with my own milk from my own breasts— that puts me in a state of awe each time I think about it. It is an honour to be a woman.

C. JoyBell C.

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Motherhood Quotes - Page 2

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