The life force of motherhood

Several years ago, a film came out that was part psychological thriller/part science fiction, that involved a missing child and a woman tortured by the denial of his existence. Way too creepy a premise for me, so I didn’t see it. Then I learned that it was all based on the premise that a mother’s love was a force so powerful, it could not be broken.

I don’t care whether the film got good reviews, its message was phenomenal.

Eventually Telly hunts down one of “them” at a dilapidated airport and he tells her that she has been a part of an experiment into whether the bonds between mother and child can be diminished. Telly refuses to deny her son’s existence. She is choked and ordered to give up her first memory of her son; the first time she saw him as a newborn. But she recalls her pregnancy and the being who has been experimenting on her is ‘blown away’.

Such is the power of a mother/child bond. This is remarkable.

When my sons were born, a woman professional friend told me she’d never seen motherhood so transform a woman as it had me. When my sons were young, I considered myself a ‘Mama Lion’ (many years before I ever heard of Sarah Palin or the term ‘Mama Grizzlies’).

So I thought of this suddenly on my radio show Friday, headed into Mother’s Day weekend, interviewing an expert on families and parenting and the love of a mother. No matter what the difficulties parents and children face, nothing is beyond the reach of relentless, unconditional, invincible love. Nothing matters as much to both  mother and child, she said, as the primal need for love.

Which made me think of the simple fact that when a pregnant woman says she’s ‘going to have a baby’, she already has one. That’s a fundamental truth and it’s where we need to start.

I’ve dedicate some upcoming radio shows to renewing the language about human life and abortion. The basics. Staring with a primer on how to even talk about it. The next show will be a roundtable to re-set the relationship between the pro-choice and pro-life movements. I’m calling on anyone of goodwill who wants to participate. What’s the single toughtest questions you’re unable to answer in the abortion debate? Or, the one you don’t know who to ask? I’ll bring them to the table, and report back how that goes.

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