Quotes About Motherhood

It's very hard to explain—part of me had enough indoctrination to believe I was not a mother. They make that very clear: "You're not a mother. You are too young. You are a bad person. You got pregnant and you aren't married. You are not entitled to this baby. You're gonna give this baby a chance in life." Part of me accepted that wisdom, but then there was the other part of me that had feelings that I wasn't supposed to have. So

I didn't want anybody to see me walking out of the hospital with this baby. We got into the car and my mom said, "What's wrong?" I said, "I'm afraid that someone's gonna come take the baby." I was waiting for the police to come. Giving up my first son had left such an imprint. It was trapped in my brain…I was not allowed to be a mother. Society

I was allowed to hold her just once. They didn't want you to bond at all with the baby. Some women chose not to see their babies. I just could never imagine that. I wanted to see that face. I'll never forget it as long as I live. You never forget that face. —

We were not criminals. We're mothers. The difference was I was not an authenticated mother. I was an illegal mother. I was a denied mother. And I had to come home and live my life after being robbed of my child. It's as if I was an unwilling accomplice to the kidnapping of my own child. So you have to live with the trauma of losing your child and then you have to live with the trauma of knowing you didn't stop it. How do you do that?

she'd taken a leave of absence when Squirt was born).

Emily, I decided, was the best Mother's Day present ever.

It is rational, even, for Muslim women to encourage the suicides of their children, as long as they are fighting for the cause of God. Devout Muslims simply know that they are going to a better place.

AFTERBIRTH  (A'FTERBIRTH)   n.s.[from after and birth.]The membrane in which the birth was involved, which is brought away after; the secundine.

You may hate being pregnant, but the minute the baby is born, she is God's precious child, given to you as a gift.

boys grow up and cleave to their wives. A girl is a daughter forevermore, no matter where she goes or how many young'uns she has.

I'm beginning to perceive motherhood as a long, slow letting go, of which birth is just the first step.

I watched my mother do what she did best, and realized there would never be a way to cut myself from her entirely. No matter how strong or weak I was, she was a part of me, as crucial as my own heart. I would never be strong enough, in all my life, to do without her.

It's not always easy being her daughter.' I think,' she said, 'sometimes it's hard no matter whose daughter you are.

Sorry? For what, Mom? She looked at me, eyes widening, For not protecting you, she said. All this time I'd been the one with everything to hide, everything to be ashamed of. Is hadn't even occurred to me that someone else might think to take the blame. I should have known what was happening. I should have known just by looking at you

I was the only one who ever went in there, and when I did the air always smelled stale and strange, pent up like the sorrow my mother carried in her shoulders, her heart, and her face.

it was hard to be a mother when you had never been mothered yourself. Your children's needs remind you of your needs. Their pain reminds you of your pain. All of it reminds you of how bad it felt, how hard it was, how much you wanted and needed and didn't get. It's very hard.

Once, she fell off of a ladder when I was three. She says all she was worried about was my face as I watched her fall.

You'll never know what your mother went through.

There were times when it felt as though my children were annihilating me (truly you have not lived until you have changed one baby's diaper while another baby quietly vomits on your shin) and finally I came to the thought: all right, then, annihilate me, that other self was a fiction anyhow.

Annie would no sooner have ridden with their children on a motorbike than left them overnight in a casino parking lot, but the way a mother feels seeing her babies erupt in unbridled joy? The same, everywhere.

Time with her daughter had become so precious in recent years that she would happily spend an hour pretending to climb stairs just for the pleasure of doing it next to her.

There are only three people in life you can never fool--pawnbrokers, whores, and your mother. Since your mother's dead, I've taken her place. Hence, I'm bullshit-proof.

Simply having children does not make mothers.

A mother's heart is a vast and glorious thing. My mother's heart was expansive, having been enlarged by suffering and years of clinging to Jesus while being misunderstood, dismissed, and judged by those she loved most. Me included. It had cost her to love, had cost her much to mother. It always does. But she would tell you that it's worth it, that there is no other way.