spirituality of motherhood

Give it up!! Give it UP! Give IT up!! Under what illusion am I functioning where I think that I can live my own life? that I can sail through life unaffected by the lives of others ... and somewhere along the line, the world has succeeded in sending me the message that I have control over my own life.. that I can choose everything... what school I go to, what car I buy, what food I eat and how I'm going to spend my days... nothing else in life I don't think so undermines that myth than motherhood... from the moment of conception (ask a mother if life begins at conception?) until you finally die, your life is not YOUR OWN ever again. You are inhabited from within for 9 mos. and then your heart is attached permanently and superglued to another human life for EVER. I was telling someone today that I understand that a pregnant or nursing mother's brain is chemically changed... I believe it's Christianne Northrup who writes about this in one of her books... that the hormones that allow for the sustenance of another's life (in utero or thru breastfeeding)... alters the brain of the mother such that she finds herself more forgetful and not as able to think in the same way she did before. Its as if Nature says .. oh no you don't!! ... you can't move so fast AWAY from this baby.. this fact of this life being dependent on you! ... it's nature ways of assuring that you are THERE for the baby. The conflict comes if and when this pregnant woman or this new mother acts as if she were her old self.... it can be a rude shock to discover that, oh, the energy isn't there for evenings out with friends or the breast milk still flows even if the baby's not with me to slurp it up. WE can not be all things still.... we can be OURSELVES... but we MUST be mother! This new truth is a full body and full person reality.