Celebrating Women & Motherhood

Mother's Day is about celebrating all forms of motherhood.

To honour this, we asked our authors how they personally relate to the following question:

"What does motherhood mean to you? This could include being a mother, being mothered, or how femininity, nurturing, and community has played a role in your life."

Zoya Patel, author of Once a Stranger

"Motherhood in my culture is a position that stretches beyond the immediate child-mother relationship. My life has been defined by women taking a guardian and protective role over me, from my mother herself, through to my older?sisters, cousins, aunts and grandmothers.

I now have the joy of playing a role in the life of my nieces and nephew, and it's one I take on with pride. For us, women and kinship is about?a shared commitment to the wellbeing, happiness and care of all children."

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Alexandra Collier, author of Inconceivable

"To become a mother, I had to wrestle with my own mother and my relationship to her. It wasn't an easy journey of sweet resolutions or treacly hugs like the end of some Nancy Myers family rom-com. It was dark and bittersweet and I was culpable in the thorny, tricky dynamic between us.

I was my mother and not my mother at all - we were separate people, weren't we?! But sometimes when I caught a look of skepticism that I'm pulling in the reflection of a window, I was her, I felt it in my body.

Now, I am a mother, a solo mother who is often the only place of comfort for my child, the only one to say yes or no, to pull silly faces and deal with the daily frustrations of raising a person who is himself, so separate to me and yet, still mine.

In having him, I have been able, in inches, to forgive my mother, to be more grateful towards her (even if I don't always show it well) and to understand the insatiable need of a child, always wanting more of you and yet giving more to your life than I ever knew was possible."