In Honor of Mothers' Day -- A few days late

It is so easy to become a "grownup" and lose touch with the person we were before we became wives, mothers, and working women. Although this new woman may be equally as passionate and full as the girl that went before, I think we all need to remember:

"We all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age, told to grow up for Gosh' sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they'd allowed to wither in themselves."
---From "Boy's Life" by Robert McCammon

So much of our society focuses on men and their need to retain their wildness and individuality in order to be whole and fulfilled males. I think I speak for more than a few when I say --- ME TOO! So if I wasn't held back, if I wasn't trying desperately to fit into the package of a Suzy Q. Normal.... What would I be? What would I be if I stepped out of the safety zone once in a while? What would I be if I tried to achieve something I wasn't sure I could do..?

I would still be a mom. There is no doubt about that. I'd still have my children and love them with a ferocious and facinating love. But what else would I do? And what would YOU do?
I challenge all of you to think about that question... As a gesture of shamelessness, I'll give you my own list:

*I would run off to India and work for Mother Theresa's organization
*I would be a poet
*I would run a marathon
*I would start an animal sanctuary,
*write for a newspaper,
*become a lawyer for human and animal rights
*I would be a journalist for the red cross, the united nations, a war correspondent
*I would expose the horrors of abused animals, children, and the oppressed around the world
*I would be a beatnik, a hippy, an all-natural gal with no apologies
*I would adopt children and animals
*I would let my life go where my heart went and not be held by every day entrapments...

And I would remember ---It's NOT TOO LATE to do any of these things at all.