Every generation
of mothers is doing
something impossible.
Something has been on my mind as Mother's Day approaches.
I think about the new mothers, the ones right now figuring out who they are inside a role that changes everything overnight. The world they are navigating looks different from the one their own mothers navigated, and nobody handed them a guide. They are finding their footing in real time, often alone, often exhausted, often quietly wondering if they are doing it right.
And I think about the mothers who have been at this for decades, like myself, who love their grown children with the same fierce and tender love they had at the very beginning, but find themselves standing at the edge of a landscape that keeps shifting beneath them. They are learning a new language, trying to stay close, trying to understand. That is its own kind of courage.
"Different generation. Different map. The same love that is completely unchanged."
What I know for certain is this: the love is the same. Whatever year it is. Whatever the world looks like. Whatever is hard and new and confusing, underneath all of it, a mother loves her child in a way that does not require translation.
That is the only thing that has never changed since 1924. Not the world. Not the challenges. Just the love that made all of us who we are.
If there is a mother in your life, new or seasoned, certain or finding her way, I would be honored to send her something made with the same kind of care she has always given.
Each box leaves our hands personally considered.
She will feel that and so will you.
Dena
The photo is one of my mother, myself and my daughter while my mother was undergoing chemo treatments for ovarian cancer we took a trip, her last one. I was in my 30's and I still miss her everyday.