c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
If I had told him the truth long ago, or had danced and drunk and sung more, maybe he would have seen me instead of a dependable, ordinary mother. He loves a version of me that is incomplete. I always thought it was what I wanted; to be loved and admired. Now i think perhaps I'd like to be known.
— Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale
What if happiness is a choice?
— Sunanda J. Chatterjee
Caro's right. She should be scared. Everything's out of her hands now. All the things coming Ava's way they won't be able to control, things she won't always ask for because she's a girl. She doesn't even know how hard it's going to be yet, but she will, because all girls find out. And I know it's going to be hard for Ava in ways I've never had to or will ever have to experience and I want to apologize to her now, before she finds out, like I wish someone had to me. Because maybe it would be better if we all got apologized to first. Maybe it would hurt less, expecting to be hurt.
— Courtney Summers, All the Rage
The LanyardThe other day I was ricocheting slowlyoff the blue walls of this room,moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,when I found myself in the L section of the dictionarywhere my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.No cookie nibbled by a French novelistcould send one into the past more suddenly—a past where I sat at a workbench at a campby a deep Adirondack lakelearning how to braid long thin plastic strips into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.I had never seen anyone use a lanyardor wear one, if that's what you did with them,but that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand again and againuntil I had made a boxy red and white lanyard for my mother.She gave me life and milk from her breasts,and I gave her a lanyard.She nursed me in many a sick room,lifted spoons of medicine to my lips, laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,and then led me out into the airy lightand taught me to walk and swim, and I , in turn, presented her with a lanyard.Here are thousands of meals, she said,and here is clothing and a good education.And here is your lanyard, I replied,which I made with a little help from a counselor.Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,strong legs, bones and teeth,and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.And here, I wish to say to her now,is a smaller gift—not the worn truththat you can never repay your mother,but the rueful admission that when she took the two-tone lanyard from my hand, I was as sure as a boy could bethat this useless, worthless thing I wove out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
— Billy Collins, Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems
The mother of an adult child sees her work completed and undone at the same time.' If this holds true, I may have to withstand not only rage, but also my undoing. Can one prepare for one's undoing? How has my mother withstood mine? Why do I continue to undo her, when what I want to express above all else is that I lover her very much?
— Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts
It's true what they say, that a baby gives you a reason to live. But also, a baby is a reason that it is not permissible to die. There are days when this does not feel good.
— Rivka Galchen, Little Labors
I don't ever want to make the mistake of needing him as much as or more than he needs me. But there's no denying that sometimes, when we sleep together in the dark cavern of the bottom bunk, his big brother thrashing around on top, the white noise machine grinding out its fake rain, the green digital clock announcing every hour, Iggy's small body holds mine.
— Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts
In the cookies of motherhood, you're the chocolate chips.
— H.L. Balcomb, Cinderella In Focus: "Curiosity is the doorway to our personal possibility!" 2nd Edition coming Oct.  31, 2017
Motherhood can be seen as a political act. (...) when adressed, disconnections can become opportunities (...) Even when sons seem to be disinterested (...), a mother's efforts are extremely important. This is how we continue to build relationship with sons.
— Cate Dooley & Nikki Fedele
Autism: The Happy Kingdom is an exceptional book full of fantasy and play. It provides us with a crucial message presented in such a sweet and magical way. You will fall in love with the King, Queen, Prince and Princess and be delighted to discover how adorable they are even if they have unusual behaviors. This story has been written to raise awareness about autism, however, it is a message that applies to everyone and should be read by all.
— Stephanie Anast
This is a story about a mother who loves her daughter. Imperfectly. Because we all love imperfectly. But if you find yourself protecting anyone as you write this piece, remember this: You're not doing it right.
— Elizabeth Strout
But I realize now that the toughest choices, the ones that will haunt us for the rest of our lives, are ones that my mom is still sheltering me from.
— Susan Ee, End of Days
Carrie, sitting there over your coffee cup in a wasteland of worn-out silver wedding rings, feeding yourself confections of motherhood like the display cakes in the bakery where you worked- all trimming over cardboard.
— Rita Mae Brown
She goes silent. Ashamed of herself as mothers are when they realize they have passed that point in life when they want more from their daughters than their daughters want from them.
— Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
For me, this baby was the most precious thing I had ever had. He was my treasure, my joy, my world, my everything now.
— Preeti Shenoy, It Happens for a Reason
Then too, motherhood is broken because in this place, to be a good mother is to give yourself completely. It is to erase yourself. This is what I refused to do.
— Nayomi Munaweera, What Lies Between Us
I don't recognize her. This is not the woman I knew so round and made-up with her hair always a wavy jet black! I stay back until she opens her arms to me - this strange and familiar woman - her voice hoarse, "¡Ay mi'jita!" Instinctively, I run into her arms, still holding back my insides. "Don't cry. Don't cry", I remember. "Whatever you do, no llores." But my tía had not warned me about the smell, the unmistakable smell of the woman, mi mamá, el olor de aceite y jabón and comfort and home. "Mi mamá." And when I catch the smell I am lost in tears, deep long tears that come when you have held your breath for centuries.
— Cherríe L. Moraga
I heard a baby cry. And this blood-splattered thing was put in my arms. My child. And, at that moment, it was like a gigantic plug appeared and - POW! - I was plugged into humanity in a way I'd never been before. Never could be. I was part of all mothers and all births from the beginning of time. I was a woman in a mud hut in Africa, in an igloo in the Arctic, a wigwam in America, a cave, a skyscraper, a spaceship. I was part of a flow and that flow was blood -
— Philip Ridley
What’s got into me? Do I want children? Do I want to be a mamma, nursing and singing lullabies? Marriage plus pregnancy? And if my mother should emerge from my stomach just now when I think I’m safe?
— Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
I really admired other parents I saw running around with their kids. I thought, "How nice is that for their children?" But they also left me racked with guilt--until one mother, out of the dozens I met, told me I shouldn't feel bad. "You're not your daughter's playmate," she said, and I nearly burst out in tears, because I needed to hear that so badly.
— Leah Remini, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology
The tyranny of maternal duty is not new, but it has become considerably more pronounced with the rise of naturalism, and it has thus far produced neither a matriarchy nor sexual equality, but rather a regression in women's status.
— Élisabeth Badinter, The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women
I used to be twenty. Then I was twenty-one, twenty-two, and so on. And then I became a mother and could no longer even distinguish the difference between twenty-one and twenty-two or the difference between thirty-eight and thirty-nine.
— Sarah Manguso, Ongoingness: The End of a Diary
I want to promise you / permanence, my constant orbit, but even continents / are revisions. I am only your diving bell in water / hemmed by shifting plates.
— Robin Beth Schaer, Shipbreaking
Don't compare yourself to other MOMS... We are all just winging it, just some hide it better than others.
— Tanya Masse
she and Ben chattered away to each other in the language of mothers with their toddlers; the two understood every word exchanged, while the rest of the world just listened, smiled, and didn’t understand a single word of the happy gibberish.
— William R. Forstchen, One Year After
Mother is the reflective principle, the balancing agent for the child. Like a guru, she allows the child to make mistakes and loves the child without condition. Like nature, she allows consequences to unfold and balance to be restored when it is lost.
— Vimala McClure, The Tao of Motherhood
You don't get your prebaby body back, ever, because you cannot go back to being a person who hasn't had a baby. Because you had a baby.
— Wednesday Martin, Primates of Park Avenue
The message is clear: a good mother breast feeds. Significantly, this good mother shares a sociocultural profile with women in other developed countries: she is over thirty, is a high earning professional, does not smoke, takes prenatal classes, and benefits from a long maternity leave.
— Élisabeth Badinter, The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women
Loving someone as fiercely as my mom loves me must be like wearing your heart outside of your body with no skin, no bones, no nothing to protect it.
— Nicola Yoon, Everything, Everything
Mothers with high ideals for child-rearing must pay the price for those ideals.
— Élisabeth Badinter, The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women
Before I had kids, I was one of those people who insisted my future children wouldn’t need the crutches of ketchup, butter and ranch dressing to eat their food. Then I had kids. Then I became one of those people whose children ate nothing. Then I became one of those people who gave their kids ketchup, butter and ranch dressing with their food. And they ate it.
— Romi Brenner, Mommy Can We Have a Jellyfish?
Happiness is when you realize that your kids have grown up to be AWESOME people!
— Tanya Masse
An unemployed father is always considered more detrimental to the family than an unemployed mother, and at the same time, child psychologists kept coming up with new responsibilities for parents that seemed to fall to the mother alone.
— Élisabeth Badinter, The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women
Sometimes, especially as women, we don't feel comfortable giving ourselves that credit. We're selfless in the best ways. But that can be dangerous too. You need to feel comfortable with affirming the greatness of who you are as a partner, a wife, a mother, a person. You are great. What you have to offer is great. When you give your time, your love, your respect, you deserve respect in return. You deserve comfort, you deserve honesty, and you deserve to feel safe. That's what relationships are supposed to be about - a place where you feel good, right?
— Jennifer Lopez, True Love
...if I were an angel of the Lord, I would mark the doors of each of my children's homes with an X, so that plague and misfortune would pass over them. Alas, I lack the qualifications. So when there was still world and time enough I fretted. I nagged. I corrected. I got everything wrong.
— Mordecai Richler, Barney's Version
Name?" the desk clerk said to me politely, her pencil poised."Name," I said vaguely. I remembered, and told her."Age?" she asked. "Sex? Occupation?""Writer," I said."Housewife," she said."Writer," I said."I'll just put down housewife," she said.
— Shirley Jackson
She was so wicked. Such a classic case of resentment and ambivalence bumping and brushing up against all that maternal instinct. The love and hate in her was as vast as space- all meteors, no atmosphere.
— Laura Kasischke, White Bird in a Blizzard
I am so thankful to MOTHER for making my ordinary life extraordinary. MOTHER - Multiplied Opportunities Through Her Endless Reinvention.
— Olarewaju Oladipo, 3SqMeals Tweets: Not Your Typical Meal - Volume 1
Each day we do the best we can, and then tomorrow we try again!
— Alison Grace Johansen
Sin is a fact of life. It is the way we deal with it that changes ours.
— Rachel Jankovic, Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches
A few weeks ago, my manager asked: "Do you feel like you're back? I feel like you're back." She meant it as a total compliment, but we had this great conversation where I was like, "You know what? I try really hard not to use that language, because it's not about going backward in life." I think it comes from this culture of antiaging, which is so not loving ourselves. I've been really focused on not being "back" to anything, but being the best version of myself right now. My body is the site of a miracle now. I don't want to be pre-miracle.
— Kerry Washington
I wonder who in their right mind thought I was mature enough for this: motherhood, home ownership, a career, adulthood in general. I hope I have them all fooled, that I have any clue at all what I’m doing.
— Cassandra Dunn, The Art of Adapting
I give praise and honor to the Holy one of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for the blessing of motherhood.
— Emunah Y'srael
Lollipops and raindropsSunflowers and sun-kissed daisiesRolling surf and raging seaSailing ships and submarinesOld Glory and “purple mountain’s majesty”Screaming guitar and lilting rhymeFlight of fancy and high-steppin’ dancesSet free my mind to wander…Imagine the ant’s marching journeys.Fly, in my mind’s eye, on butterfly wings.Roam the distant depths of space.Unfurl tall sails and cross the ocean.Pictures made just to enthrallCreating images from my truthPainting hopes and dreams on my canvasCapturing, through my lens, the ephemeralLet me ruminate ‘pon sensual darkness…Tremble o’er Hollywood’s fluttering Gothics…Ride the edge of my seat with the hero…Weep with the heroine’s desperation.Yet… more than all these things…Give me words spun out masterfully…Terms set out in meter and rhyme…Phrases bent to rattle the soul…Prose that always miraculously inspires me!The trill runs up my spine, as I recall…A touch… a caress…a whispered kiss…Ebony eyes embracing my soul…Two souls united in beat of hearts.A butterfly flutter in my wombMy lover’s wonder o’er my swellingThe testament of our love given lifeNewly laid in my lover’s armsLuminous, sweet ebony eyesJust so much like his father’sA gaze of wonder and contentmentFrom my babe at mother’s breastWords of the Divine set down for meFaith, Hope, Love, and CharityGrace, Mercy, and undeserved Salvation“My Shepherd will supply my need”These are the things that inspire me.
— D. Denise Dianaty, My Life In Poetry
Mothers have need of sharp eyes and discreet tongueswhen they have girls to manage
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Men
Daughter, daughter, shining brightPrecious jewel within mine sightOh, if I could soar with theeAs you seek your destiny.To see with you the caves and skiesVistas grand beneath your eyesTaking wing to horizons newLet us wonder who waits for you.A dragon bright?A dragon dark?Victor of duels with battle mark?A dragon strong?A dragon keen?Singer of honors and triumphs seen?Red, Gold, Bronze, and BlueTo your lord you shall be true,Copper, Silver, Black, and White,Who will win your mating flight?For in your hearts our future restsTo see our line with hatchlings blessedAnd for those who threaten clutch of flame,To feel the wrath of dragon-dame.
— E.E. Knight, Dragon Avenger
Although the infertile are entitled to sour grapes, it's against the rules, isn't it, to actually have a baby and spend any time at all on that banished parallel life in which you didn't.
— Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin
I suffer from CLAUSTROPHOBIA, a fear of closed spaces.For example, I’m petrified that the WINE store will be closed before I have time to get there!!!
— Tanya Masse
I can feel them. The babies. They're not crawling all over me. They're not vomiting in my hair or shrieking. They're doing perfectly normal baby things, and I'm keeping them alive. But I resent them. Their constancy, their intrusion on my relationship and my free time and my naps and my imagination and my heart. They've come too soon, and I can't do any of what I had planned. All I can do is survive.
— Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"
Maybe I stepped into the skin my mother left behind, and became the girl my mother had been, the one she still wanted to be. Maybe I was wearing her youth now like an airy scarf, an accessory, all bright nerves and sticky pearls, and maybe that's why she spent so much time staring at me with that wistful look in her eyes. I was wearing something of hers, something she wanted back. It was written all over her face.
— Laura Kasischke, White Bird in a Blizzard
No children were harmed or neglected during the writing of this book.
— Eleanor Alspaugh
I didn't say any of this to my sister. How I saw her being broken into mediocrity and motherhood; her body broken and then her mind - or did her mind go first, it's sort of hard to disentangle - and then for her to turn around and say Broken is Best, I didn't say how that made me furious beyond measure.
— Anne Enright
There’s in a miss and in a Mrs.A difference that no one ought to missFor their bodies and hearts are scripts apartTheir journeys and worries are each a loneI’ll speak for the Mrs. since me she boreLeave the mothers breasts alone For there is the infants life’s best And in front they were by the author set Not to be out for everyone test Nor for every eye to quench its lustBut that with her offspring The mother shall nurture and blest
— Newton Kibiringi
Even AWESOME MOMS use the F-BOMB!
— Tanya Masse
Motherhood was a twenty-four-hour-a-day, all-encompassing job. It was the hardest job I ever had. Everything that happened to you [her child] happened to me. I had once heard children described in a novel as "hostages to fortune" and certainly my happiness depended on yours.
— Amy Poehler
Being a mother was like being trapped in the first fifteen minutes of a horror film. Everything was fine, lovely. But there was this persistent sense of dread.
— Laura Lippman, Hush Hush
I once heard someone on the radio saying that a bee is never more than forty minutes away from starving to death, and this fact has stayed with me because it seems to have a certain personal resonance. My children are in a perpetual proximity to catastrophe: concussion, dehydration, drowning or sunstroke. Keeping them safe requires constant vigilance.I've turned into one of those mothers, full of terror.
— Harriet Lane, Her
Although I wasn't there to bear witness, I imagine Lot's wife scanned the masses for her children. Perhaps she sought out the curves of their mouths and the shapes of their faces, trying to memorize her children, grown now. She looked back as I and any strong, loving mother would have done.
— Brenda Sutton Rose, Dogwood Blues
She is the creature of life, the giver of life, and the giver of abundant love, care and protection. Such are the great qualities of a mother. The bond between a mother and her child is the only real and purest bond in the world, the only true love we can ever find in our lifetime.
— Ama H. Vanniarachchy
Mothers always worry. There’s no off switch.
— Priscille Sibley, The Promise of Stardust
It’s a good thing babies don’t give you a lot of time to think. You fall in love with them and when you realize how much they love you back, life is very simple.
— Anita Diamant, The Boston Girl
If I had written the greatest book, composed the greatest symphony, painted the most beautiful painting or carved the most exquisite figure I could not have felt the more exalted creator than I did when they placed my child in my arms.
— Dorothy Day
MOMB - noun - One who can deal with all of the INSANITY of being a MOM... Because she's the BOMB!
— Tanya Masse
Throughout history, the most brutal cultures have always been distinguished by maternal-infant separation.
— Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Mama: Love, Motherhood and Revolution
There are things that mothers can manage best when they do their duty.
— Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys
MOMBIE - noun - Suffers from forgetfulness, fatigue, exhaustion, moodiness, sleeplessness, confusion and moments of insanity!Has difficulty eating or drinking anything while it’s still hot and peeing alone.
— Tanya Masse
There's a reason why the assumed goal for women in virginity-movement screeds is marriage and motherhood only: The movement only believes that's the only thing women are meant for.
— Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women
My daughter asked me what it’s like to have children… So I followed her to the washroom every time she went and asked her questions through the door until she lost her S#!T…
— Tanya Masse
There is a world of difference between the experienceof 'care' – the wiping of a bottom, the bathing of a body: basicbiological obligations – and the intimacy that makes us wantto live.
— Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Mama: Love, Motherhood and Revolution
Whatever it is in your life that is separating you from Jesus Christ, he knows about it. He longs for you to come to him now, so he can lend you his strength to overcome your weaknesses. His love is there for you, as solid and sturdy as a brick. He doesn't turn away in disgust when you make a mistake, no matter how many times you've made that mistake before. If you'll let him, he'll pick you up and dust you off and say 'Try again. I know you'll do better next time.' And because he never gives up on you, you will try again, and eventually, with his help, you'll conquer whatever it is that brought you down.
— Emily Watts, Confessions of an Unbalanced Woman
Our Company was participating in a management seminar in which we were taught a strategy that goes by the unlovely name of 'reverse your buts.' I did not make this up! It works like this:Maybe you're thinking, 'I love you, but you're driving me crazy.' Instead, try thinking, 'You're driving me crazy, but I love you." Isn't it amazing how different that feels?
— Emily Watts
On a good day, my style is librarian chic. On a bad day, it's frumpy mother.
— Cassandra Page
As if new motherhood isn't hard enough, you begin the hardest and most challenging weeks of your life physically and emotionally exhausted. Even if you manage to leave the hospital without physical scars or emotional wounds, you are probably exhausted and unsure of what to do. And then you are either thrown into a world where you need to get used to being out of work and home alone, or you need to figure out how to go back to work and be a mom at the same time. Or like many women, you find some new combination of the two that has no resemblance to your former life.
— M. B Antevasin
Motherhood is hard enough without judgement from others who don't know the whole story.
— Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost
Motherhood, true motherhood, was what went on when no one else could see.
— Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost
She grinned, a silty grin. 'You were my two dividends, yes? Don't you forget that.'Then she sighed, took a deep breath, and said, 'But what an investment. My life.
— Jerry Pinto, Em and The Big Hoom
She knew better than to waste that time. There isn't always someone who wants you singing to him or nibbling his ear or brushing his cheek with a dandelion blossom. Somebody who knows when you're being silly, and laughs and laughs. So long as he was little enough to carry, she could hardly bring herself to put him down.
— Marilynne Robinson, Lila
Why had no one told me that my body would become a battlefield, a sacrifice, a test? Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers? But of course there is no way to tell this or to hear it. Until you are the woman on the bricks, you have no idea how death stands in the corner, ready to play his part. Until you are the woman on the bricks, you do not know the power that rises from other women-even strangers speaking an unknown tongue, invoking the names of unfamiliar goddesses.
— Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
Young mothers are the most vicious tribe in the world if you don't fit in.
— David Mitchell, number9dream
Some women are born mothers, some women become mothers, and some have motherhood thrust upon them. I struggled against it all my life, but I think the truth is I was probably born to it. I don't do badly, I don't do well, I just do it.
— Fay Weldon, Moon Over Minneapolis
Being a mother gives you a singular sort of vision, a prism through which you can see your child with many different faces all at once. It is the reason you can watch him shatter a ceramic lamp, and still remember him as an angel.
— Jodi Picoult, The Pact
It had been six weeks since I brought my second child, my daughter, kicking and screaming into the world. Six weeks, that magic number men everywhere look forward to and women dread.
— Julia Arnold, Clash of the Couples
Being a mother must be the saddest yet the most hopeful thing in the world, falling into a love that, once started, would never end.
— Yiyun Li
H.L. Mencken once said that Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having a good time. As she looked down at her dead child, Mary Beth realized that the unbearable sense of loss she felt was tempered by gratitude and a kind of relief. There would be no more boyfriends now, no more weekend parties. Ruby would remain pure forever, and for that her mother was deeply grateful. Catholicism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be having a good time . . . with your daughter.
— Anna Quindlen
In the space of his years, my body had taken its full shape and my heart had grown in wisdom, for I understood what it was to be a mother.
— Anita Diamant The Red Tent
Motherhood is a constant battle of going to bed early so you can catch up on sleep and staying awake so you can enjoy some peace and sanity!
— Tanya Masse
whoever has grown without a mother has missed half of his/her lifetime
— HPM
Breastfeeding is a beautiful thing, one of the most beautiful things that exist in nature. Think about how a woman can literally feed her baby with her body! In my eyes, this is a certain form of beauty, of divinity! To know that my body can not only form and bring another human being into the world, but that I can actually feed babies with my own milk from my own breasts— that puts me in a state of awe each time I think about it. It is an honour to be a woman.
— C. JoyBell C.
I'm just saying, when a woman in a maiden, she's in the spotlight. Everybody cares what a pretty, young girl does and says. And she's got some pretty strict archetypes to adhere to: Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella or Britney Spears. Pick your poison. But when you become a young mother? People don't give a fuck what you're doing. Their eyes glaze over before they even finish asking you. Once a woman starts doing the most important work of her life, all of a sudden, nobody wants to know a thing about it.
— Rufi Thorpe, The Girls from Corona del Mar
At the moment of giving birth to a child, is the mother separate from the child? You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child.
— Dogen Zenji
When you go into labor you see that you are not the captain of the ship. You are the ship. There is no captain. There are only the waves.
— Karen Maezen Miller, Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood
These days, “getting lucky” means drinking an entire cup of COFFEE while it’s still HOT!
— Tanya Masse
When she had him along, the world looked different, and she liked the way she saw things she'd never seen before. . . But she noticed other things, too -- the way she herself felt acutely visible with the baby in her arms, and the way some people's faces lit up when they saw a child. His warm weight was like living ballast, thrumming with energy, giving her substance. Folks were drawn to that.
— Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation
Fatigue is epidemic among women in general, and mothers in particular. Mothers talk about sleep the way someone who is starving talks about food. Fatigue can overshadow your life, making everything seem like too much trouble.
— Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett
Fatigue is an excellent gauge of well-being because it is a very hard symptom to mask. The only way to get rid of fatigue is to treat the underlying causes. Fatigue has many faces, but they all say the same thing - the mental and physical load are too great.
— Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett
scary mommy confession #80920" I invited you into my home as a guest. And you brought my two year old permanent markers and play-doh. next time I visit you, I'm bringing your teenage daughter condoms and crack.
— Jill Smokler, Motherhood Comes Naturally
I am a mother-tired, but when my soul doth magnify, my time doth magnify.
— Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
I can speak of our baby like this to no one else. Who but his father would linger over the exact width of his gummy little smile or the blueness of his eyes, or the sweetness of his little lick of tawny hair on his forehead?
— Philippa Gregory
And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much.
— Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue
Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body
— Elizabeth Stone
I can imagine no heroism greater than motherhood.
— Lance Conrad, The Price of Creation
Fear not, the time is comingFear not, your bones are strongFear not, help is nearbyFear not, Gula is nearFear not, the baby is at the doorFear not, he will live to bring you honorFear not, the hands of the midwife are cleverFear not, the earth is beneath you Fear not, we have water and saltFear not, little motherFear not, mother of us all
— Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
In most families, care-giving becomes the woman's responsibility. While care-giving can enrich you, it can also deplete you if you don't have support or make time for self care.
— Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett
I've been melted into somethingtoo easy to spill. I make moreand more of myself in orderto make more and more of the baby. He takes it, this making. And somehowhe's made more of me, too.
— Brenda Shaughnessy, Our Andromeda
She felt a lump form in her throat, and she swallowed hard. She wouldn't have this-the swollen ankles and pink cheeks and the feel of that glorious, curving belly under the palm of her hand-but she could still be a mother. That was the important thing.
— Sarah Pekkanen, Catching Air
Sometimes being a MOM is like a good ol’ country song! You lose your sleep, you lose your hair, you lose your patience, you lose your energy, you lose your memory AND you lose your SANITY! But you DO IT all for LOVE!
— Tanya Masse
Her time has come," answered Miss Lizzie. "That's why I didn't marry Harvey - long ago when he asked me. I was afraid of 'that'. So afraid." "I don't know," Miss Lizzie said. "Sometimes I think it's better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than just to be safe." She waited until the next scream died away. "At least she knows she's living.
— Betty  Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
One very important key to maintaining our daily sanity is a simple scheduling tactic I call Putting Things the Hell Off.
— Ian Frazier, The Cursing Mommy's Book of Days
It is an oyster, with small shells clinging to its humped back. Sprawling and uneven, it has the irregularity of something growing. It looks rather like the house of a big family, pushing out one addition after another to hold its teeming life - here a sleeping porch for the children, and there a veranda for the play-pen; here a garage for the extra car and there a shed for the bicycles. It amuses me because it seems so much like my life at the moment, like most women's lives in the middle years of marriage. It is untidy, spread out in all directions, heavily encrusted with accumulations....
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea
But would I have chosen to be Paul? I'd miss Will too much, the feel of his shins.
— Mona Simpson, My Hollywood
I prayed in silence that perhaps even now, the queen might have a son and might know joy like this, such a strange, unexpected joy- the happiness of caring for a child whose whole life was in my hands.
— Philippa Gregory, The Queen's Fool
When you're a passenger on an airplane, you are told that in the event of a change in cabin pressure, you should put your mask on first and then assist your children. You can't help them if you are unconscious. A similar principle applies with your day to day health. Mothers tend to put others first. While this is admirable in one sense, it is not a good practice in the long run. You cannot strike a balance between your needs and the needs of your family if you are constantly run down. Stop abusing your body.
— Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett
Isolation can be a particular problem for mothers at home with small children. Mothers become isolated from each other because we fear judgement. Other mothers can be our harshest critics. And we anticipate that criticism and don't ask each other for help.
— Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett
Burnout can be defined as a loss of enthusiasm, energy, idealism, perspective, and purpose; it has been described as trying to run a marathon at full speed. It's often the mothers who care the most who are the most prone to burnout.
— Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett
Our culture sends some amazingly contradictory messages about what an ideal mother is like. Mothers try to live up to these ideals without recognizing the contradictions or the improbability of the task. As mothers, you are often expected to have a fulfilling career, time for personal interests, a rewarding marriage, involvement in your communities, a thorough grasp of current events - and be able to provide baked goods at a moment's notice.
— Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett
Being mom is one of my favorite things. It makes my day watching my kids grow and accomplish things in their lives.
— Amanda Penland
Just as there is no warning for childbirth, there is no preparation for the sight of a first child... There should be a song for women to sing at this moment, or a prayer to recite. But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name the moment.
— Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
Because I'm your mother, that's why.
— Leslye Walton, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
The journey of motherhood centers on being the person God has chosen out of all humanity and space and time to care for these souls, these beings who will exist for all eternity.
— Rachel Balducci, How Do You Tuck In a Superhero?: And Other Delightful Mysteries of Raising Boys
Maybe she’d always wished to be beautiful and didn’t quite dare to, because she could tell that people didn’t say she was and more attention was given to other women, but she still had a frail hope that there’d been a mistake and she was after all.
— Mona Simpson, Casebook
On first hearing that little voice – as fine and friable, I felt, as cotton thread, the impact on my soul was that of the highest magnitude of earthquake, those that occur every hundred years, say, or every thousand. The old shell I called myself cracked and was swallowed by a sudden crevasse, and just as suddenly was lost in the commotion.
— Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love
I was there for every moment. It made me a better woman and a better person. I can't say that all the damage done by my original family doesn't still haunt me
—  it does. But my life would have been bereft of deeper meaning and experiences without marriage and motherhood.
Delirious as it can be, sex is only one kind of intimacy, and yet has become the cultural catchment area for all kinds of needs because our understanding of intimacy is so poor. Brutal work schedules, related geographic isolation, and the concomitant fracturing of families has meant that there is little time for intimacy, and even less to teach the necessary skills. But intimacy, the axis of romance, is slow, based on the sharing of a life rather than show. In terms of intimacy, folding laundry together or sharing the feeding of a child can have more impact than the most extravagant bouquet.
— Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love
I think women should have choices and should be able to do what they like, and I think it's a great choice to stay at home and raise kids, just as it's a great choice to have a career. But I don't entirely approve of people who get advanced degrees and then decide to stay at home. I think if society gives you the gift of one of those educations and you take a spot in a very competitive institution, then you should do something with that education to help others... But I also don't approve of working parents who look down on stay-at-home mothers and think they smother their children. Working parents are every bit as capable of spoiling children as ones who don't work - maybe even more so when they indulge their kids out of guilt. The best think anyone can teach their children is the obligation we all have toward each other - and no one has a monopoly on teaching that.
— Will Schwalbe, The End of Your Life Book Club
Women are like trees, growing slowly over time. So many rings creating layers of maturity as their branches spread and reach out to the sky. Motherhood prunes those branches. Sometimes it prunes them back hard and painfully. But if you let go and trust in the good of what it means to be a mother, if you can trust in the knowledge learned from the hard lessons, then faith and belief will carry you through. And in the end, you will grow fuller and more beautiful from the, sometimes harsh, pruning of motherhood.
— P.R. Newton, Shattered Embrace
Suddenly, as they walked with their buckets, it was not the child in each face that she sought, but the Wonder that had raised itself on to its two feet, that had learnt to walk, to run, that had spoken, that had got in touch with life under her hand.
— Enid Bagnold, The Squire
The children seemed to cast their Precursors like shadows about the house, sometimes tangibly, in the sound of a voice, sometimes by suggestion, because it was striking the hour for their return from a walk, sometimes mysteriously, because inside the shell of their mother's head the children were painted like angels on the roof of a chapel.
— Enid Bagnold, The Squire
It's tough being AWESOME all the time, but the kids need someone to look up to!
— Tanya Masse, Stripping Away the Insanity of Life and Parenthood! (Volume 1) Paperback
We watched each other evolve into parents, with all the fear, rage and confusion evolution can involve. Our eight-year-old is the incarnation of our union; we are forever fused by her blood. My old take on romance seemed vaguely ludicrous, as affected as a pair of spats. I no longer saw the point in 'getting back to normal', that pantomime of pretending nothing had changed; I wanted to evolve from sexual posturing into a deeper consciousness, that of love.
— Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love
First rule of motherhood, dearie: men are screw-ups. Learn it now and you'll be a whole lot happier.
— Neal Shusterman, Unwind
A mother's love, it knows no end. It begins with a dream, with a silent wish, and it never ever ends.
— Kelly DeBie
SHE holds the hand to help you in your First Step,She is your First Teacher,SHE holds your hand when You Fall Down,SHE is the one who guides you in Life,SHE hides you from all Trouble,SHE is sometime Mentor,SHE even nurses you when you Fall ill,SHE gives you the confidence,SHE never give False Appreciation,SHE is the one who will scold you the most on your mistake,She is the one who even Fight for you when you are right,SHE is the one who believes in you when others do not,SHE is the one who Loves you even if You don't love her,SHE is the one who gave you LIFE,Do You know Who is 'SHE'??'SHE' is Mother your own MOM...
— Debolina Bhawal
And I always say that to the children: “You are the greatest thing I ever did in my life!
— Dave Isay, Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps
They lay together like a word and a comma, asleep within an unfinished sentence.
— Patricia Storace, The Book of Heaven: A Novel
Now that Olive was grown, I didn't know what to do with myself. You could build your life around one single thing, like a view or a child, but that was risky. You had so much to lose.
— Michael Lee West, She Flew the Coop: A Novel Concerning Life, Death, Sex and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana
Sadie heard her inside cleaning up the kitchen and wondered what dreams Betty's mother had for herself, if all mothers had them, bottled up beneath their mother exteriors.
— Karen Brown, The Longings of Wayward Girls
This is the book, then , and the book of Shakespeare. And every day you must read a page of each to your child--even though you yourself do not understand what is written down and cannot sound the words properly. You must do this that the child will grow up knowing of what is great---knowing that these tenements of Williamsburg are not the whole world."Katie: " The Protestant Bible and Shakespeare.
— Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The Mother Of GodThe threefold terror of love; a fallen flareThrough the hollow of an ear;Wings beating about the room;The terror of all terrors that I boreThe Heavens in my womb.Had I not found content among the showsEvery common woman knows,Chimney corner, garden walk,Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothesAnd gather all the talk?What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,This fallen star my milk sustains,This love that makes my heart's blood stopOr strikes a sudden chill into my bonesAnd bids my hair stand up?
— W.B. Yeats
Mothers should negotiate between nations. Mothers of fighting countries would agree: Stop this killing now. Stop it now.
— Yoshikani Taki
Is she a good baby? People would ask me. Well, no, I'd say.That swirl of hair on the back of her head. We must have taken a thousand pictures of it.
— Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation
On weekdays, as soon as she picked Bela from the bus stop and brought her home, she went straight into the kitchen, washing up the morning dishes she'd ignored, then getting dinner started. She measured out the nightly cup of rice, letting it soak in a pan on the counter. She peeled onions and potatoes and picked through lentils and prepared another night's dinner, then fed Bela. She was never able to understand why this relatively unchallenging set of chores felt so relentless. When she was finished, she did not understand why they had depleted her
— Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland
Young women are closer to the time when they were manipulative and childish and they don't let their babies manipulate them as much as older mothers do. These are only my conclusions from watching children in grocery stores. I love to watch them work on their mothers to get what they want, and, because I am always a child, I'm pulling for them to get the candy and to get it NOW. The other day I watched a little blond beauty pull her mother's face to her and lay her hands on her mother's cheeks and kiss her nose. Needless to say they opened the bag of cookies then and there.
— Ellen Gilchrist, The Writing Life
A dominant ideology represents the view of a dominant group, often by making the existing order seem inevitable. Thus, by depicting motherhood as natural, a patriarchal ideology of mothering locks women into biological reproduction, and denies them identities and selfhood outside mothering.
— Evelyn Nakano Glenn
My handsome husband and I didn’t make love for almost six months. I was enraptured, lost to my old life, and, in this obsession, disregarded author Ayelet Waldman – who famously wrote of her 'smug well-being' and 'always vital, even torrid' sex life in the wake of childbirth: I ignored my husband as a man. Instead, I revelled in him as a different thing altogether, far more seductive and important, and infinitely more resonant. My husband was no longer just a man: he was the father of my child.
— Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love
I'd wrestled against the inner voice of my mother, the voice of caution, of duty, of fear of the unknown, the voice that said the world was dangerous and safety was always the first measure and that often confused pleasure with danger, the mother who had, when I'd moved to the city, sent me clippings about young women who were raped and murdered there, who elaborated on obscure perils and injuries that had never happened to her all her life, and who feared mistakes even when the consequences were minor. Why go to Paradise when the dishes aren't done? What if the dirty dishes clamor more loudly than Paradise?
— Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
He carries no burden, he feels no pain. What man, like woman, lies down in the darkness and gets up with child? The gentle, smiling ones own the good secret. Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make flesh that holds fast and binds eternity.
— Ray Bradbury
Over time, we would learn each other, and I would learn to love her like a mother loves a daughter, imperfectly and without roots.
— Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Language of Flowers
But the magic moment when he walks alone has not yet happened, and I was praying he would do it before I have to leave. Now he will take his first step without me. And every step thereafter, I know. Every step of his life, and me not there to see him walk.
— Philippa Gregory, The Red Queen
The Mommy Mystique tells us that we are the luckiest women in the world -- the freest, with the most choices, the broadest horizons, the best luck, and the most wealth. It says we have the knowledge and know-how to make "informed decisions" that will guarantee the successful course of our children's lives. It tells us that if we choose badly our children will fall prey to countless dangers -- from insecure attachment to drugs to kidnapping to a third-rate college. And if this happens, if our children stray from the path toward happiness and success, we will have no one but ourselves to blame. Because to point fingers out at society, to look beyond ourselves, is to shirk "personal responsibility." To admit that we cannot do everything ourselves, that indeed we need help -- and help on a large, systematic scale -- is tantamount to admitting personal failure.
— Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
Confession: Having kids did not fix me. I was not somehow more whole, less botched-up, or more certain just because I had a kid... I was still me, with all my holes and problems and questions - only now I was also exhuasted and had a lot more laundry to do.
— Jerusalem Jackson Greer, A Homemade Year: The Blessings of Cooking, Crafting, and Coming Together
I realized, listening to the silences that fell sometimes in my interview groups, that there are things that are sayable and unsayable about motherhood today. It is permissable, for example, to talk a lot about guilt, but not a lot about ambition. You can talk a lot about sex (or its lack) but not about the feelings that are keeping women from sleeping with their husbands. You can talk about society's lack of "appreciation" of mother's and the need for more social validation -- but not about policy that might actually make life better. You cannot really challenge the American culture of rugged individualism.
— Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn't interest you, don't do it - I would have made a terrible mother.
— Katharine Hepburn
I would keep her, and raise her, and love her, even if she had to teach me how to do it.
— Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Language of Flowers