I came across this article in Parenting magazine and this section really stuck out to me...it is so true. Motherhood changes everything.
"...But just because a mom isn't pondering politics and art or the latest dire reports on climate change doesn't mean she isn't using the best of her mind. All the time I wasn't reading books or watching the news, I was thinking --about how to give my children boundaries that would make them feel secure but not thwart their natural sense of adventure; about how to foster curiosity and kindness and gratitude and good humor; about how to help my kids feel connected to the world but not entrapped by worldliness. Without realizing it, I was getting a crash course in human development and social interaction.
Don't mental activities of this kind count as real thought? Of course. It's not the kind of thinking that lends itself to lively cocktail -- party banter, though, so it's easy -- especially in the early months -- to think that motherhood requires you to check your brain at the door. Maybe that's why we all berate ourselves at times ("But I used to read The New Yorker!"). What I've learned in 11 years of motherhood is that real thinking, the deepest kind of thinking, often has nothing to do with current events -- "news" that ceases to be new, or sometimes even noteworthy, by the end of the day.
What a mom learns by knowing a child from its first tiny flutter is nothing less than how a human being is formed. Motherhood forces us to understand, if only so we can teach it to our children, what really matters in the small space we each have between birth and death. And the easiest way for me to learn this lesson is by living in deep, penetrating kinship with other human beings -- by living, in other words, in a family."
-By Margaret Renkl
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