Mothers were once children too. So often when we think of our mothers we think of them in terms of what they meant to us. What they gave to us and what they did not. How they were present with us once, and how now they are lost.

The Mother is an archetype representing unconditional love. Our experience of the Mother tells us where we stand in relationship to our own connection to unconditional love. And the ways in which this love has been missing always illuminate the place in which this love may truly be found.

If our mother was hurtful or critical, we know that tolerant and accepting love lives within our own hearts. If our mother was beautiful and yet absent, we know the presence of absolute love lives within our own hearts. If our mother was someone we deeply wish to embody, then her essence absolutely lives within our own hearts, the home of all Divine Love.

Our mothers are little girls who grew up, as big as they possibly could in this life, to be all they possibly could be in this life, and to do the very best they possibly could, while remembering and missing and yearning for their own mothers themselves.

Not all of us will have the great, profound honor to become mothers in this incarnation, but all of us have had the perfect gift of being born of a mother, a little girl who became a woman who wanted to learn how to love.

Mother of mine, I love you in return.