A mother's bond...

I recently read Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy and today, Mother’s Day, it played over and over in my mind. It is a beautifully-written memoir of becoming a writer, but it is also the story of becoming a woman — of being mothered in adulthood, becoming a mother figure, and the enigmatic yet enduring love between mother and child.

The overarching cruelty of Roy's mother surely shapes her own forthrightness, determination, bravery (her journey to get an abortion stands out particularly) and ultimate success as a writer. Yet what is blindingly clear is that, despite that cruelty, there remains an underlying love — an unbreakable bond that drives and carries them both. 

Motherhood does not necessarily involve birthing. Not every woman becomes a mother, but the impulse to nurture, protect and care like a mother can live powerfully within us. I see this instinct even in my seven-year-old daughter. Some of my closest friends have not had children and yet they have often taken on a motherly role with me; nurturing and, at times, saving me with their own motherly intuition when I most needed that kind of love. Perhaps that, too, is motherhood: the instinct to nurture and protect another being, an ancient and deeply human impulse that connects us to the animal core of care and survival that runs through all living things.

Mothering is also a beautiful paradox: it asks for immense self-sacrifice while also expanding the heart beyond what it once knew. It asks for discipline and routine as well as the capacity for chaos, patience and kindness. It requires you to bend to the continual dance of losing and gaining, often at the same time, and, certainly in my own case, it involves constantly reshaping the self. It is the truest form of alchemy, and however imperfect or complicated, it becomes a connection that lives beyond words — something instinctive, almost cellular. 

I felt this today while watching the film adaptation of Hamnet, where Jessie Buckley portrays a mother’s love and grief with such intensity that it almost crushes you with the excruciating weight of it: the understanding that a mother’s love is, in many ways, life itself. I know that weight well, and I felt it particularly sharply today for my own mother, who suffered a hemorrhagic stroke a few months ago, completely out of the blue, and is still recovering her speech and much of her understanding. Motherhood has, in this instance, alchemised into something completely pure and love-filled. Watching her interact knowingly with her five children constantly reminds me that the bond between mother and child exists somewhere far deeper than language or memory.

And perhaps that is why stories like Hamnet resonate so deeply. They remind us how fragile — and how powerful — that bond is.

They also made me think of the countless mothers and children around the world being separated by conflict and war. The suffering portrayed in Hamnet feels especially resonant when we consider how many families today are experiencing their own unimaginable grief and loss.

Today I find myself thinking about mothers everywhere — in all capacities, and in all their strength, tenderness and complexity.

Olivia x