Becoming a mother to another human being is a leap of faith. It matters not if you came to motherhood through your own womb, a surrogates or donors. It matters not if you chose motherhood or it chose you. Of if you held onto your infant or gave them as a gift to another.

It matters not how you came to it. Becoming a mother is a leap of faith. Sometimes blind. Sometimes, joyful. Hesitant. Resentful. Scared. Motherhood and faith walk hand in hand.

Faith, love will be enough to sustain you in the moments of sheer exhaustion, an exhaustion you truly have no idea will descend upon you once your infant emerges and is nestled at your breast or in your arms or the arms of a partner. And when that exhaustion hits, as it inevitably will, again and again, trusting faith will carry you through your tiredness, your fears you have made a huge mistake, your doubts that you are worthy of becoming a mother to this precious, defenceless human being.

Becoming a mother is about trust. Trusting your instincts. Trusting you are doing okay, even in those moments when you feel like you’ve made the most disastrous decision of your life because you truly do not have what it takes to sustain the life of another human being. It’s about trusting in Love. That it truly is enough. That no matter what state you’re in or how you turn up, love will carry you through the dark and cloudy moments of your fear, you are not enough to be a mother.

Becoming a mother is about commitment. To another human being. To life. To yourself. It’s about giving of yourself in ways you never before imagined before this being came screaming and kicking into your life, or you into theirs. It’s about being committed to not crawl back under the covers and hide out while your child screams because you have tried everything to soothe them and nothing you do seems to work. It will demand, again and again, that you put another first, always. And it will insist, every single moment of every single day, that you risk getting your heart broken, again and again.  

Because becoming a mother is about choosing Love. Always. Forever. Wholeheartedly, even when you don’t believe you can or want to. It’s about doing the loving thing for another human being, even when really all you want to do is eat a tub of ice cream and watch junk TV hour after hour. It’s about cleaning up messes you didn’t make with a loving heart and always turning up, even when you look your worst because this tiny, precious, miraculous human needs you to turn up, exactly the way you are. It means having the courage to hold on when all you want to do is let go, and to let go when all you can think of is to hold on tightly. And it requires you to forgive yourself, again and again, in those moments or days or weeks or months when you don’t turn up or simply can’t.

Because no matter how you got to this state or how you turn up, or when, becoming a mother changes you. It will stretch you. Defy you. Frustrate you. Scare you and even when you don’t want it to, it will define you. It will make you believe in miracles. See beauty in everything. From dirty diapers and spit ups on the floor you just washed to first smiles and reading the same storybook for the 1000^th time.

And it will make you believe in love. Eternal. Lasting. Penetrating. Heartbreaking. Love.

Love that doesn’t ask, ‘what’s in it for me?’ but demands instead that you give it your all, whatever that all may be. Because motherhood doesn’t come with any guarantees of being loved in return or not feeling rejected, or accepted. It only comes with the promise, you will be changed, forever and always, by Love.

In year’s past, I would join my sister at the lodge where my mother lived to celebrate Mother’s Day.

I’d take flowers, Jackie would probably have made mom some of her favourite food to share for lunch. Before mom could no longer climb in and out of the car, we would often have met at a restaurant, la grande famille including my daughter who lives in Calgary, to celebrate together.

This year is different. Hugs are virtual. Contact is distant. Restaurants are still closed. And, mom is no longer in this world.

Different doesn’t mean ‘bad’. It just means ‘not the same as before’.

Different also means, we have choice.

To squawk and balk at the presence of something new/unusual/different. To carry loss and sorrow like a burden or to let it flow like a river of Love healing the wounded, broken places.

I can not change the fact that life always finds itself ending in death. Like the snow falling outside my window as I type on this May morning, I cannot change it.

I can accept its presence with curiosity, an open mind and heart, seeking the beauty in what is appearing, finding value in the different so that I can live with grace in its presence in my life.

My mother took her last breath on February 25th. Our world changed that day.

It is a different world without her in it. I consciously stay away from judging it. It is what it is. Not good. Not bad. Different. Present.

Her leaving has created this space where today we get to experience our first Mother’s Day without her physical presence. She is always here. Always part of my DNA. Part of my memory. Part of my life.

It is a time for reflection. For gratitude. For grace.

And for remembering.

I am the woman, and the mother, I am today because of my mother.

I am the woman, and the mother, and grandmother, I am today because of my daughters.

I am forever grateful. Forever in Love.

Namaste.

Happy Mother’s Day to all.