The Poetry of Motherhood

I had been in the hospital for a few days with my new baby, Alma, and was breast-feeding her when suddenly she let out a little whimper, like a "mew" as she was feeding. It was a sound so vulnerable, so innocent, so new to me. I sat there stunned by my love, looking down at this tiny angel who had just wrenched my heart-forever - and this poem came to me:

Soft whimpers
Heaven-made to break
Mothers' hearts

The poem was sudden and complete-and it came out of nowhere. I thought, "Wow, that's a haiku. Cool." I forgot about it for a while, but the poem kept coming back to me so I decided to write it down. I had never written a haiku before, and so thought it was a keeper. Little did I know I had just opened the floodgates of baby-inspired poetry to flow from me, because over the next twelve months I wrote, or rather "channeled", over seventy haikus! Then I started to write about what they meant.

I feel like these poems were baby-inspired in the larger sense: my baby, your baby, our babies inspired these words that came through me. I wanted to share them, and the lessons of first-year motherhood and babyhood that they represent. I wanted Moms to know that the miracle they are living, exhausting and difficult at times, is felt by us all. Not only are we not alone, we are, together with the ferocious love that our babies illicit, a very powerful force. A force to be reckoned with if we harness and direct it.

Since beginning this book, our country has begun to experience several crises, and the world seems to be ever more tumultuous. For me, that's all the more reason to re-affirm the importance of motherhood, for in that love, that commitment, that joy, are the answers. It simply can't be hopeless when we feel what we feel for our babies, all of us, around the World. We have important work to do, Moms. Our children have a profound and meaningful future to help shape, and we are shaping now who they will become in that inevitable future.