For the Women Like Me...

To the Forgotten Women
Mother’s Day has been a very painful day for me for the last five or six years. It seems selfish to even type that, but it’s my most honest statement about what the day symbolizes for women like me who desperately want a baby but have not (yet) been blessed in that way. Every year, I am reminded of the failures that led me to this place—childless, husbandless, incomplete. Every year, I try to honor the mothers around me while still dealing with unparalleled feelings of failure because I do not have children. See, I’m not a typical modern woman with feminist leanings. I am an old-fashioned Southern woman who thinks a woman’s ultimate and most powerful duty is to bear and to raise children with a responsible man.

So again, like the many years before, I spent the last few days pouting about my fate—feeling hopeless and lonely about the possibilities that may or may not present themselves. Then today, my ancestors spoke loudly and clearly and reminded me that:

I am a Mother (though not yet in flesh).

I birth words that change the world around me.

From my womb leaps creativity as courageous as Kirikou,

as powerful as Sango,

as beautiful as Erzulie.

I am a Mother because I birth myself through and from my own tears.

So today when I gave my female ancestors their flowers, I bought some just for the Mother that lives already within my skin. Happy Mother’s Day to all of the Women just like me.

~tdp