Writings About Motherhood

In the last few days, I have come across two astute pieces of writing on the subject of motherhood. I hope some of my friends currently experiencing young motherhood will be inspired and shored-up as was I.

The first was from the Introduction of The Art of Catholic Mothering by Maura Koulik, which I read last year and was perusing again. She described that she was mother of a 12-month-old, was pregnant again, and felt that she was "headed for a nervous breakdown."

"Now it is eight years later. My oldest son is now 9 years old
and he has four younger siblings. I have been busy mothering, home schooling and
learning from mistakes, crosses and by the power and grace of the Holy Ghost.
Through tremendous spiritual and emotional growth, I can easily see what it was
about motherhood that confused me so much in those early years. It was this
thing called SELF SACRIFICE. No one had ever told me that motherhood
and dying to self were synonymous! No wonder I was so confused! No
wonder I just couldn't seem to fit into the skin of being a mother! I was too
self-centered and this vocation felt all wrong.

"But it wasn't all wrong; motherhood was exactly the tool that
God had chosen to shape my soul and this may not be news to you, but 'being
shaped' rarely feels pleasant. And even in that retreat of 1997 God allowed me
to see and understand that each child He would send me would be yet another tool
with which He would try to remove some part of SELF that wasn't Christ-like."
(emphasis in the original)


Today I came across a beautiful psalm written by a young mother and originally published in the 1938 November issue of Marriage Chretien (re-published in Christ In the Home). In her poem, the mother compared mothers with cloistered nuns.

O my God
Like our sisters in the cloister
We have left all for you;
We have not imprisoned the youth of our faces in a guimpe and under a
veil,
And though we have cut our hair, it is not in any spirit of penance . . .

Deign nevertheless, O Lord, to cast a look of complaisance
On the humble little sacrifices
Which we offer You all day long,
Since the day our groaning flesh gave life to all these little
Christians
We are rearing for You.

Our liberty, O God, is in the hands of these little tyrants who
claim it every minute.
The house has become our cloister,
Our life has its unchanging Rule,
And each day its Office, always the same;
The Hours for dressing and for walks,
The Hours for feeding and for school,
We are bound by the thousand little demands of life.
Detached by necessity every moment from our own will,
We live in obedience.

Even our nights do not belong to us;
We too have our nocturnal Office,
When we must rise quickly for a sick child,
Or when between midnight and two o'clock
When we are in the full sleep we need so badly
A little untimely chanter
Begins to sing his Matins.

We practically live retired from the world:
There is so much to be done in the house.
There is no possibility of going out anyway without a faithful sitter for
the little ones.
We measure out the time for visits parsimoniously.

We have no sisters to relieve us on another shift.
And when the calls for service reach high pitch for us
We have to sweep, to wash the dishes, scrape the carrots for the stew,
prepare a smooth puree for baby and keep on going without stopping
From the children's room to the kitchen and to and fro.
Aprons and shirts, underclothes and socks
And all the baby's special things.
In this life of sacrifice, come to our help, O Jesus!