Saturday, February 11, 2006

Mother is a VERB, not a noun.

I just read that in the newest O magazine. How profound is that?! How freeing! Think of other verbs, take skiing, now that the olympics have started. If you're a skiier, then you ski. But would you ever judge yourself based on one run? one race? one sprint? even one day? You wouldn't decide that you were a failure because you didn't have a good day skiing. And nobody else would either. Yet with this mothering thing, we go to bed and berate ourselves for having a less-than-stellar day. But if we take the noun out of this job and make it only a verb, then we can be gentler and kinder to ourselves. It frees us up to be all that we are instead of how we perform on just one task. This all made so much more sense in my head than it is now that it's typed...
But just think! While there's no medals for mothering, that I'm aware of, that just means that it's not a competition! So, no big awards night because this is NOT A COMPETITION. Thank goddess...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Having a child made you a MOTHER, so you mother your child.
Right, there is no competition, so no need for judging, or rating. Just enjoy the journey. M

Mary-Sue said...

mmmmm! i LOVE comments!!! thanks for yours dear M. xo

Andrea said...

I don't know if you will see this or not - I am really enjoying exploring your old posts! But I really agree with what you say. This is one reason that I do not refer to Kaetlyn as 'a diabetic'(noun-label) but say that she has diabetes - so then the disease is not her but something that is put on from the outside - an aspect that doesn't have anything to do with the core of who she is.