Mothers

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.  ~Honoré de Balzac 

The various quotes which exist about mothers is just about enough to tell you what a mother means to the world. She is the woman who bears you for the duration of almost a year, gives birth to you, tolerating all the pain of the labour to hold the precious infant version of you in her arms and coo at you. The woman who held you when you cried, gave up her sleep to make sure you went back to sleep. The woman who watched you walk your first steps and catch you when you fell. She laughed when you laughed and her heart broke when you cried. She listened to your problems when you were growing up and tried to solve them, but if she couldn't, she'd always give you the best advice you could have hoped for ("Mom knows best"). You'd fight with her, yell at her, but in the end, you'd come back to her.

 Over the years, she must've made so many sacrifices that you've never noticed, or as Tenneva Jordan puts it "A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie". She's seen you grow up from a child who babbled, to someone who could take the stage and talk to a hall full of people. She's possibly had to give up a career to take care of you, but I bet she'd never complain. We all love our mothers and possibly some of us even want to be like our mothers. But in this process of viewing her as a mother- the caretaker, the nurturer, the problem solver; we lose sight of our mothers as women. In accepting our mothers are our mothers, we forget that they're more than just that, they are wives, daughters, granddaughters, daughter in laws, friends and maybe even working professionals. 

The responsibilities of a woman after marriage (especially after bearing a child) seem overwhelming. Not only are you a daughter to your parents, you are a wife to your husband, a daughter in law to your husbands' parents and a mother to your child. And what of your career? How does a woman manage to balance her working life with the responsibilities of being a mother? What are the sacrifices it takes to maintain a balance between all aspects of yourself?  There are women out there who balance all these aspects. They are a mother, the perfect wife, the perfect daughter/daughter in law and a professional  who is looked up to in their work place. My mother is one of those women, the one who's always been there for my entire family and also managed to make a name for herself in her workplace. I'm glad to have always had my mother's love and look forward to one day, being like her.. 

After all, mommies are just big little girls :)