Happy Mother's Day

Today I have been thinking about how I share this day with my mother now, and someday I might share this day with my daughter. Mother's day brings to mind the connection between mothers and daughters that, for me, has changed significantly since becoming a mother, especially after becoming a mother of a girl.

A new appreciation of my mother and the choices she has made along the way has emerged with a more compassionate, empathetic understanding. Not only for the choices she has made, as I still may not fully agree with all of them, but at least for the recognition of where those choices were rooted and what feelings, resources, limitations, and thoughts might have powered them.

We, my mother and I, will forever be very different people; we come from very different places, in a different era, and have settled in very different communities, but we have the common thread of being both mothers and daughters. That powerful thread twists, ravels, and unravels, sometimes with grace, other times with knots and frays; yet, it is the thread that reminds me of what we have in common: gardening, love of crafts, the joy of delicious foods, and of course, being both daughters and now mothers.

This Mother's Day I would like to celebrate all of the daughters who will be one day or already are both daughters and mothers. And as always I'd like to recognize those beautiful women in my life who mother their families, friends, and communities without, for whatever reason, having children of their own. Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers of this world.