The white moths

On finding the way back to your own self

‘The white moths under the leaves are amazed’ [Alice Oswald]

Today, in Ireland and the UK, is Mother’s Day. An incredibly tricky, often times heartbreaking day for countless individuals. Those who have lost, who never got to have , who ache for, who regret, who hope and wish, who mourn — and so much more besides. For more reasons than I’m ready to write about yet, I find this day exceptionally difficult. An inter generational, passed down through a scarlet red bloodline kind of difficult. It’s my second year as what society would define as a mother — although the more I mother the stronger my conviction that every single one of us on this beautiful, aching earth is a mother…

Choosing to bring a child into this world or not; being able to or not; loving being a mother or not; feeling lost or not—we hold inside us the grace, strength, resilience and hope that makes a mother.

That sense of the existence of universal mothering has grown stronger in me with every day on which I mother in what we traditionally view as mothering. There is so much I want to say on mothering — on what it is and what it isn’t for me — but I am not ready for that even nearly. What l am ready for is to try to find a way back to the person I knew before my world changed forever. I want to be able to look in glass and recognise the person reflected back…