What It Means to Be a Mother

Being a mother isn’t just changing diapers, heating up bottles, or fighting with jars of baby food. That is just the start, the moment when a mother realizes that she can do anything for her little world that she gave life to. That world is the child in whom she places millions of hopes and dreams…

Being a mother means changing your life, your time, and your way of thinking for your children. It means giving all your heart and all your energy every single day to push your kids onward and to teach them to live.

It means having a reason to live the rest of your life. Wanting to enjoy and make the most of every moment. Being full of feelings as you watch your children grow, feeling blessed and nostalgic when they make great strides in life.

If there is a love that we can call true, it is the sincere love of a mother, a love that is both infinite and eternal. In reality, being a mother involves following the steps of little teachers, our children, until they grow up, and then just existing, and without knowing it, our children teach us about unconditional love.

Being a mother means never being alone in thought, for a mother is always thinking double: for her children and for herself. A mother feels tremendously lucky because she knows that her children are the greatest treasure that she could hope to have.

Motherhood doesn’t mean always smiling; it also means crying rivers. It takes many sleepless nights hugging your pillow. It means an endless supply of worries; hours of running after your children; days, months, and years making up hundreds of ways to camouflage vegetables and fish; putting up with fights; and expending every ounce of patience on the infinite number of absurdities that life has to offer.

What a mother does for her children

It hurts a mother more than anybody to say no to her children, to challenge them, to test their strength, to see them fall, abandon their dreams, or let their talents go to waste. Yet she knows the importance of limits and wants her children to learn them.

A mother cannot live for children, but she can do her best to share it with them to the fullest. This is why a mother tries every day to sew enormous, light-weight wings that will allow her children to fly very, very high.

A mother wants everything to go right for her children, but she also wants there to be storms so that they may learn to sail the high seas. She knows that her children have to face their demons, free themselves from their burdens, and trip over the same stone thousands of times.

Mothers see their children’s faults better than anybody, but they accept them and never hide them. They know if their children aren’t doing okay just by looking at them, given that mothers are the most skilled detectors of emotions.

They also experience their guilt with the greatest possible terror, as feeling guilty and responsible for the problems of the person you love most in this world is terribly painful. This is why a mother carries such a great burden on her back. Maybe this is a heroic act, but it is above all else an act of generosity.

Sacrificing her goals, dreams, or life for her children not only makes a mother a courageous person, it also makes her the most strong-willed, generous person in the world.

Those nights when the kids wake up with a fever, facing the world and overcoming all their fears, pushing her kids onward, and especially protecting them…that is what makes mothers the best example of courage and love.

Because mothers are the strongest people in the world, for their weakness is their strength, and this will always be the love for those who light up their heart and fuel their desire to live.

Main image from Analia Heredia Celayes and embedded image by Carla Pott