An Honor

Words & Photography
by Caroline Snider



Today was the first day of your 20 months of life that you didn’t breastfeed. I didn’t set out to wean you or anything, you just fell asleep before nap time in the car and then at bedtime you were too distracted by your new book to notice. So when you asked just before I dimmed the lights and sung you the same lullaby I’ve sang since the night you were born, for some reason I felt compelled to tell you, "No milky right now baby bear." And you simply sunk into my arms instead.

Mothering you like this. Holding you in my arms and close to my chest. Bringing you back to your first home again and again. And I want it to last forever. This season of closeness, when you are mine and I am yours.

I know for us, for me, that if this is the end then it has to be this way. That nursing you for the last time would be too much for my heart to bear. Not because I mourn you getting older, because what an impossible blessing that is. But just because it has been so much more beautiful than I ever could have imagined. Mothering you like this. Holding you in my arms and close to my chest. Bringing you back to your first home again and again. And I want it to last forever. This season of closeness, when you are mine and I am yours. But it can’t of course.

The world is opening itself up to you and you are ready. To step just a little further from my arms and a little closer to it all. And I am learning to let you. A lesson I’ll need to learn again and again. A lesson of love and surrender. So painfully sweet it aches in the depths of my chest. But know this, my darling, I will always be here. The home that you can always return to. The arms that will hold you safe. And the love that can never be diminished.

The world is opening itself up to you and you are ready. To step just a little further from my arms and a little closer to it all. And I am learning to let you. A lesson I’ll need to learn again and again. A lesson of love and surrender.

And to you, my friend. If this wasn’t your experience know that I honor you and the way you nurtured your babe. I honor any challenges or grief you might have held along that journey. I honor whatever time you chose to say goodbye to that part of your Mothering. And I honor you if this was never part of your experience of Mothering at all. We are all Mothers, nurturing those we love the most in the best possible way.