I am reposting this writing this morning because it will soon be Mother’s Day and I want to celebrate again the Foster Moms, Adoptive Moms and all the Moms of the world today.
A few years ago, Mother’s Day found me temporarily raising my one year old granddaughter. My friends and family were very quick to tell me what a wonderful person I was to take on this responsibility. But aside from the very real physical hardship of raising a one year old (try getting up off the floor at 65), I really felt nothing but love and a kind of awe that I had been given this opportunity to mother another member of my family. But as any Grandmother can attest, you fall in love with your grandchildren as easily as you fell in love with your own children. So, really I was living a lie. I wasn’t this super wonderful person taking on this responsibility – I was just a grandmother loving a granddaughter.
My granddaughter has been adopted bymy son and daughter-in-law. And I want to dedicate this blog to my daughter-in-law and all the other mothers in the world who love with their whole hearts a child who has come to them another way.
These women are true heroes. They open their hearts and give much needed love and guidance to a child who they did not carry under their hearts. These wonderful women don’t shrink from giving this love and taking on all the hard work of raising a child while living with the possibility that the child may end up being taken away from them. To paraphrase Brian Andreas – they wake up every morning and love the child all over again. And getting up every morning and loving all over again is really the definitive explanation of what a mother does. She slays the dragon of the everyday hard work of raising a child and wakes up every morning and loves the child all over again.
Happy Mother’s day to you beautiful heroes. Like spring, you give the gift of renewed hope and beauty to this world.
Sending my love to all mothers,
Bernadette