The most important person in the world.

To mother is, above all, to learn at all times, to impose challenges, to face fears, to test yourself, to become a cook, a nurse, a psychologist, a teacher, a warrior, a friend…

Motherhood is a long road that starts right at the moment when a new life begins to form within you or when you dream, struggle and, through adoption, make an opportunity that life denied you a reality.

Of all the processes of existence, motherhood is the most contrasting. From the moment you have children, you will be accompanied by a persistent and deep fear of the dangers that may lie in wait for them, while at the same time they are the reason for an inner strength and a will that you did not know you owned; at the moment of living the incomparable, exhausting and beautiful experience of being a mother, you will have to give up other professional and social facets, without the sacrifice seeming to be so; sometimes you will feel as if all the people on the planet have vanished, in spite of the support you count on, and it will only be enough to feel the smell of your little one so that you don’t need anyone else to be happy.

When you decide that it is time to become a mother you begin to experience changes within you, without hardly noticing it; in addition to the transformations of the body, your mind goes further and prepares for the future: if you are an easy sleeper you will be surprised to wake up even by a small moan, surely sometime you will be enjoying the short, but essential moments of bathing, feeding and sleeping that your baby allows you in his first years of life and you will be alarmed to feel his cry or that he calls you to later discover that it was all a figment of your imagination.

Sometimes motherhood has been painted in a rosy color, making people believe that it is a quiet, uncomplicated stage and, while it is true that it is enjoyed to the fullest with its learning, fears and joys, which becomes the most beautiful gift for women who decide to have children, it is essential to inform and explain the many complexities that comes with being responsible for another person so that mothers are prepared and face their new role with more dawns than shadows.

To be a mother is, above all, to learn at all times, to impose challenges, to face fears, to test yourself, to become a cook, a nurse, a psychologist, a teacher, a warrior, a friend… without this limiting you to make mistakes, to ask for help, to need a break to dedicate time to rest, to recreational activities or to your professional improvement, and this does not mean that you are doing it wrong.

To mother is to see your child asleep on your lap and think how you could have been without that being of light whose eyes treasure all the tenderness in the world, to rediscover in your own actions those of your mother or grandmother when you were the one rocking between their lullabies, to guess in the extension of your body that today grows out of you too fast the very essence of every second of your life.

To mother is to convince yourself that, despite the inconveniences of existence, the possible distances, the misunderstandings or misunderstandings, the difficulties of everyday life, you will never give up doing anything to ensure the happiness of your child or to try to be better every day for him.

To mother is to understand that, from now on and forever, you are someone’s safe harbor, refuge and hope, push and support, teaching and relief; that there will be no love more inexplicable, beautiful, dedicated, great, selfless and powerful than the one that helped you learn to grow from your childhood and the one you now apprehend and feel as you watch the one who made you one of the most important people in the world grow older and older when she made you a mother.

Written by Jessica Mesa Duarte.