mother's week.

i'm a writer [hope this isn't a surprise],
& as austin-based independent business & marketing writers go,
i feel i'm pretty good.

i've got a way with the words.

but i'm consistently & duly humbled by
the neverending river of amazing, inspiring writers
i regularly come across, either in print or online.

recently, i came across two pieces i just. must. share.
& since they're both about motherhood,
i thought i'd extend mother's day into mother's week,
posting one today & another one friday
especially for your mama-spends-two-minutes-reading-for-pleasure self.

this one is from [in]courage;
it's titled "on mothers" by holley gerth.

can i tell you a secret?

i am in awe of mothers.

the hand-holding, brow-wiping, life-changing women of the world.

i love how mothers create, bring life into the world, nourish souls, tie the shoelaces of the future.

i love how they wrestle about where to send kids to school, & what to get for christmas, & how to take the seed of a life & grow it into strong, tall faith.

i love the way they laugh about too much poop & mountains of laundry & the beautiful chaos that they somehow keep spinning in orbit.

i love how time etches memories across their faces, like little lines in an extraordinary story, & the way their eyes light up when someday someone calls them “grandma.”

i love how they throw their arm in front of you at a sudden stop in the car even if you’re not their child, even when their hair is silver, even when nursing & diapers feel like so many moons ago.

i love how even women without children {i’m one} somehow feel the need to nurture, to grow, to pour themselves into the next generation like so much water that just never stops. mothers of the heart if not the body.

i don’t know where you are this morning but i wish i could cup your face in my hands and whisper this: “you are a good mother. you are making a difference. you are beautiful.”

then i’d drop my hands and smile at you. & in a moment, you’d be busy again doing what you do & i’d watch the miracle.

the miracle of motherhood.

the ordinary-extraordinary.

the divine with a little dirt under its nails.

jill churchill said: “there’s no way to be a perfect mother & a million ways to be a good one.”

& with all of you mother-wonders out there?

i don’t think i’ll ever stop counting . . .


image source: this mother-wonder, of the newest addition to my maternal duties. introducing skipper inkspots.