For the mother who wants nothing, more than hugs.

For the mother who needs nothing, beyond time spent together.

For the mother where words of cheerful greeting find they can never be enough, but are still said anyways.

For the woman who held your hand as a newborn, when fingers curled around a significantly larger one; who held your hand at two, at four, at fourteen and, now, whose hand often seems small wrapped tightly inside your own.

For the woman who is more than “mother.” (Aren’t we all?) But who made being mother her priority.

For the woman who surely had her own dreams, but helped you realize yours.

For the woman who holds your own children, her tender grandbabies, as if they were her own, only softer because she’s come to understand even more, if possible, the reality that nothing else matters beyond love like this.

For the women who didn’t have a mother-love like I’ve described.

For the people who have mothers but have, equally, wounds to heal: look around and know that the world is your mother and that, sometimes, mothers are not born by a birth, but by love, dedication and guidance. (And, often, this mother is best found in ourselves.)

I know, more, that as I raise my own kids with the most earnest love I’ve ever felt, that I’ll also be the source of many pointed fingers and awful tales, and rightly so.

I hope, sincerely, that a good mother is made not always by action, as so often easily and idealistically declared, but, too, by intention and by honest, love-filled labor.

Because we are mothers, but we are not perfect.

We are women, but we are much more.

So, to my children and to the mother who bore me (and to everyone), I offer up my deepest, most heartfelt gratitude for the most excruciatingly difficult role a person could ever play in another’s life and for, equally, a position for which there truly are no words.

(But I’ll say them anyways.)

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

Photo: Author’s own.

The post (Happy Mother’s Day to All.) {A Poem} first appeared on Jennifer S. White.