Mother's Day

I probably think of myself as a mother first and foremost. It's so terribly cliche. I know that as an empowered, independent woman I have many roles, but this is the one that defines me. I was a daughter before I was a mother, I am a wife, I have been a student, and a business owner and a citizen. All the details of pregnancy, labor and delivery aside - from the moment that another person emerged from my body, I knew that nothing else would ever matter more than that. I love my children fiercely and completely. I feel their pain and their joy as if it were my own. I would do anything to protect them including, but not limited to, standing in front of on oncoming train. This is the joy and the terror that is motherhood.

When a child becomes ill, it fills a mother's heart with horror. Somehow she has failed to protect her child. She watches the child's distress with her own special agony - laced with guilt and fear. She does everything in her power to make her child well - no doctor too distant, no treatment too extreme - she would put her own blood in the child if it was necessary - her kidney, her heart. She will not rest until her child is safe and sound. But if her child suffers from mental illness, she cannot make it better. She finds herself helpless. She wonders if somehow she caused this. She failed to protect her child.

To all the mothers who may read this, take heart. You did not CAUSE this. You cannot CURE this. You have no CONTROL over this. But you will COPE. Because in the end, all we can really do for them is love them. We do that naturally and automatically. That is the joy and the terror that is motherhood.

Find a guidebook for parents with children with brain disorders here.