To minimize a mother to simply a caretaker is to miss the depth of all that she is. Yes, she feeds, changes, bathes, wipes, and rocks. She makes the beds, finds the shoes, washes the sticky hands, cuts the fruit, folds the laundry, answers the cries, and carries the weight of a thousand unseen things inside the quiet corners of her mind and the household. But motherhood has never been only task work, she is a landing place, she is the steady, she is her children’s calm.
She is the nervous system her children borrow before they know how to find their own footing. She is the familiar scent, the steady voice, the warm body, and the soft lap. She is the first place love has a shape. Before a child understands language, they understand the way their mother looks at them. Before they can name safety, they feel safe in her arms. Before they can make sense of who they are, they begin to see themselves through the lens of her eyes, her tenderness, her delight, her patience, her repair.
A mother’s inner world becomes part of the atmosphere of the home. To be a mama is to be a shelter and the constant inside her little lives that are always changing. To be the always kind of love that your children are sure will always be there to catch them.
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