"A roaring engine of life"

Monday, June 26:

I just started reading "Hello, My Name Is Mommy: A Dysfunctional Girl's Guide to Having, Loving (and Hopefully Not Screwing Up) a Baby" by Sheri Lynch (an author recommended some time ago by BusyMom), and the introduction really grabs me:

"On my bumpy and neurotic journey to motherhood, I discovered something amazing about pregnancy, something carefully hidden beneath all the layers of pastel sentiment and cutesy bunnies-and-duckies rhetoric of the maternity marketplace: power. There is no creature on earth more powerful, more imbued with raw, primal humanity than the woman who carries, births, and nurses an infant. No one. A mother is a roaring engine of life, a maker and symbol of messy, bloody, wrenching miracles. Yet we hide her behind the kind of infantile whimsy that marks so much of the pregnancy experience. At her most potent, we insist that she become sexless, and worse, childlike. On top of that, working women are made to feel apologetic for having obeyed the clumsy and unproductive dictates of our biology. Mommies are relegated to the sidelines as creatures who are no longer clever, interesting, or sexy. That's worse than unfair; it's a complete fraud."

Now, I didn't go into motherhood for the power. But I'm liking what she has to say.

With a childhood that appears even worse than mine was, Sheri claims even "misfits" can raise great children and aren't doomed to repeat their parents' mistakes.

Can't wait to read the rest . . . .