Quotes About Nurturing

Mothering is like that, a net of living threads to lovingly encircle what it cannot possibly hold, what will eventually move through it. But right then my job was

In a garden, food arises from partnership.

It would be so satisfying to provide for the well-being of others— like being a mother again, like being needed.

I have shed tears into that flow when I thought that motherhood would end. But the pond has shown me that being a good mother doesn't end with creating a home where just my children can flourish. A good mother grows into a richly eutrophic old woman, knowing that her work doesn't end until she creates a home where all life's beings can flourish.

The most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world. Individuality is cherished and nurtured, because, in order for the whole to flourish, each of us has to be strong in who we are and carry our gifts with conviction, so they can be shared with others. Being among the sisters provides a visible manifestation of what a community can become when its members understand and share their gifts. In reciprocity, we fill our spirits as well as our bellies

Why don't I give her a bottle while you eat. I brought coffee." "Really, I didn't know they made men like you," she said, letting him follow her into the kitchen. When he put down the plate and thermos, she handed over the baby and tested the bottle. "You seem very comfortable with a newborn. For a man. A man with some nieces in Sacramento." He just smiled at her. She passed him the bottle and got out two coffee mugs.

Our children are not our possessions, Nora. They're loaned to us to raise and to be set free. From the time he could look up, he was determined to fly high and fast.

No doubt about it: Mac would make an excellent mother.

Hospital. "I

I have learned that the love a mother has for her child is unique among human emotions. Every mother knows this insticntively, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need articulating.

Moms never get out of the kid business. Last time I checked, motherhood had no expiration date.

Motherhood was not for the weak.

Making the decision to have a child—it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. —Elizabeth Stone

You are a little girl, so you are still in milk days.

Parenthood wasn't about blood or biology, he found; it was about a joyful willingness to give yourself over, to subordinate your own needs for someone else's. When you loved your kids, you'd give up everything to keep them safe and make them happy, and you didn't care about the other things, the ones that went away.

Alys told her that it was the way of women, to tote a newborn and then adjust as it grew until by the time the child was plump and heavy, the weight seemed naught.

With her toddler playing on the floor by her feet, his widow now nursed her new baby on the porch of her homeplace, attended by comforting women who sat with their knitting and embroidery and spoke only of happy things.

Everybody has it wrong way round. Parents don't make children—children make parents. They shape our behavior from the first wail. Mold us into what they need. It can be a pretty rough process, too.

These kids are like vessels you pour your love into. And some of those vessels are big and strong and happy to hold all the love you want to pour in, and others have cracks in them and the love isn't worth much because it all leaks out. I used to think love could save anything, but it can't if the vessel's cracked.

Every house needs a grandmother in it.

I think this power of living in our children is one of the sweetest things in the world…

It is a merciful provision my dears, for it takes three or four women to get each man into, through, and out of the world. You are costly creatures, boys, and it is well that mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters love their duty and do it so well, or you would perish off the face of the earth,' said Mrs. Jo solemnly…

This is the first duty of parents, and no false delicacy should keep them from the watchful care, the gentle warning, which makes self-knowledge and self-control the compass and pilot of the young as they leave the safe harbour of home.

The two older girls were a great deal to one another, but each took one of the younger into her keeping, and watched over her in her own way; 'playing mother' they called it, and put their sisters in the places of discarded dolls, with the maternal instinct of little women.