I need to feel competent

"She needs to feel needed, and I need to feel competent."

-Lu Hanessian Let the Baby Drive

This sentence made me want to quote it and write an entire post on the way mothers feel about their daughters when their daughters become mothers. I can see myself in this statement. I wanted so desperately to feel competent when Lily was first born. I wanted to do it myself. I wanted to figure it out for myself, and by golly I wanted to be good at it. I wanted to do it right. 

I quickly learned that there is no right. There is only doing the very best I know how to do. 

I continued reading. This woman shared her thoughts about her mother at 3 am one morning, a time of day that has its own mystique that only mothers and their tiny babes truly know about. How is it that when I read anything written by any mother, we all talk about "that" time in the middle of the night? 3 am. And it's not just a guess. I truly have been up at 3 am many a night.

She continues, "She wants me to know where she came from, who she was when I was born, what she expected and dreamed of, what broke her heart and what filled her soul."

I could quote the entire page. Word after word, line after line, it's as if this woman has put into words every thought from my mind and feeling from my heart. How does this woman know my soul?

It's because she is a mother. I am a mother. And even if they don't admit it, I bet my own mother and grandmother would feel these words pierce their souls too.