{"id":3557,"date":"2014-03-27T10:50:43","date_gmt":"2014-03-27T14:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/?p=3557"},"modified":"2014-03-27T10:50:43","modified_gmt":"2014-03-27T14:50:43","slug":"motherhood-realized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/motherhood-realized\/","title":{"rendered":"Motherhood Realized"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"motherhoodF<\/span>lying to the west coast recently, I found myself seated on the plane alongside a young couple. They appeared to be about twenty-four or so, the same age as my own older son. She, five months pregnant, was immersed in a how-to book about mothering newborns. He, sweet but distracted, played a video game on his computer.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t help but watch them with tenderness, these two innocent parents-to-be with so many joys and challenges and unknowns in their future. The young woman spent a long time bent over a page of diagrams showing, in step-by-step detail, how to swaddle a baby. At one point, she summoned her husband\u2019s attention to the page as well. She went through the motions of blanket folding in the air, concentrating intently, referring back to the directions. It was clear she wanted him to take the swaddling lesson as seriously as she did.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have lots of time to practice, honey,\u201d her husband said, before turning his gaze back to the screen on his laptop.<\/p>\n

Shyly, she turned then to me. \u201cDo you have children?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

I told her I did, two sons.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you swaddle them?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d I answered. \u201cBut not for long. That only lasted for a week or so. By the time I got good at it, they didn\u2019t want to be swaddled anymore. And then I had to learn something else. That\u2019s pretty much the way it goes all the way through motherhood — just as you get one thing figured out, your child is on to some new stage, and you\u2019re trying to keep up.\u201d<\/p>\n

We talked a bit more, two women separated by decades, one of us at the very outset of her journey and the other well along the path. But we had something in common, too, something ineffable and universal and timeless: the desire to connect the dots of our shared experience, to hear each other\u2019s stories and to acknowledge the mysterious, demanding, transformative work that bound us already \u2013 motherhood.<\/p>\n

As the plane landed, I wished my seatmate good luck with her baby, due in June. There was so much more I wanted to say, things like, \u201cWhatever you are expecting motherhood to be like, it won\u2019t be that; it will be different.\u201d And, \u201cNo matter how much you may doubt your abilities, and you will doubt them, don\u2019t worry; you have what it takes.\u201d And, \u201cEven though the days may feel endless, the years will fly by. Don\u2019t race through them. Enjoy the ordinary moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"motherhood\"F<\/span>ortunately, I resisted the impulse to offer this pregnant stranger a string of platitudes that would go in one ear and out the other. But I do wish I\u2019d asked for her name and address, so I could send her instead a copy of this lovely, profoundly inspiring anthology, Motherhood Realized<\/strong><\/a>. Although official publication date is still a week away, early readers are discovering in this book an instant community of wise, eloquent, dedicated mothers \u2013 the very chorus of voices I would love to have offered my young friend on the plane, to support and guide and accompany her through all the twists and turns of the years ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cHeading Home with Your Newborn\u201d might ease a new mom through the drama of giving birth and surviving the first few sleepless nights. But Motherhood Realized<\/strong><\/a> is a book that will live on bedside tables for years to come — well-thumbed, underlined, bookmarked, shared. Here are the personal stories of mothers just like you and me, not experts who have everything figured out or agendas to promote, but ordinary women who have seized time from their daily lives to report from the trenches of firsthand experience and who have summoned the courage to write from their hearts \u2013 the ups, the downs, the hard lessons learned, the small moments savored, the tears shed, the priorities reordered, the humble revelations celebrated, the inevitable challenges confronted.<\/p>\n

Gathered from the rich archives of Power of Moms<\/strong><\/a>, one of the largest and most beloved online communities of mothers, the pieces selected for inclusion in Motherhood Realized<\/strong><\/a> comprise the literary equivalent of an intimate coffee hour with your most engaging, most observant, most empathetic women friends. It\u2019s an \u00a0honor for me to have one of my own essays (about grown-up children returning home again) included here, and it was a joy to read the other pieces and find myself in such good, varied company. Kindred souls, for sure.<\/p>\n

Power of Moms<\/strong> defines itself as a community of \u201cdeliberate mothers.\u201d Not perfect mothers, not stay-at-home or working or home-schooling mothers, not mothers of any particular religious or philosophical bent, but rather mothers who have simply made a choice to be thoughtful about, and fully present to, the day-in-day-out demands and joys of family life and child-rearing. If this sounds like you, then you, too, will find sustenance and companionship in these pages.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m delighted to offer one copy of this special book to a reader here.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Enter to win a copy of Motherhood Realized<\/strong>.<\/span><\/h3>\n

Just leave a comment<\/strong> below. Answer the question, \u201cWhat is your greatest parenting challenge or joy right now?\u201d<\/em><\/strong> Or, if you prefer, simply say \u201cCount me in.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

One book winner will be chosen at random on Tuesday, April 8<\/strong>, the official publication day.<\/p>\n

For more info, visit here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

To order the book, click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flying to the west coast recently, I found myself seated on the plane alongside a young couple. They appeared to be about twenty-four or so, the same age as my own older son. She, five months pregnant, was immersed in a how-to book about mothering newborns. He, sweet but distracted, played a video game on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21,27,8,15],"tags":[301,324],"class_list":{"0":"post-3557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-books-for-parents","9":"category-family-life","10":"category-parenting","11":"category-writing-and-reading","12":"tag-motherhood","13":"tag-parenting-2","14":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}