Mothers carry.
We carry our unborn child within our womb connected to us by the magical umbilical cord which nourishes that baby through us.
We carry the physical and emotional changes our bodies go through as the baby inside us grows, moves and makes demands of us before they even enter the physical world outside the womb.
We no longer consider ourselves only. We sacrifice.
We carry our newborn infant in our arms tentatively like a fragile egg we are scared may crack.
We carry the sleep deprivation. The guilt society imposes on us with idealised images of the ‘good mother’. The loss of identity. The joy of the first smile or giggle.
We carry the weight of an all consuming, ferocious and protective love.
We carry the weight of a new comprehension of what true, self sacrificial love is.
We carry our growing child on our hips. We carry them on our chests in slings. On our backs. On our shoulders. Until we can carry them no more and they walk alone.
We carry the weight of a world which seems increasingly broken and hell bent on imploding on itself. Yet we carry the need to protect our littlest ones from these unnerving truths.
We dare not contemplate carrying them in death.
Yet mothers carry.
endnotes:
The work of the magnificent Kathe Kollwitz directly inspired this lino print. She used her woodcuts to document unrest and the horrors of what was happening around her during civil unrest and World War One.
If she were alive today I have no doubt she would have sought to document the current atrocities we are witnessing on a daily basis on our tv and phone screens.
