Like many people of my generation who came of age with women's liberation and the sexual revolution, I wanted it all and got most of it -- an aerobicized body, exotic boyfriends, and a glamorous job as a feature writer for United Press International. My beat was to interview the famous and powerful, from Yoko Ono to Billy Graham to Queen Noor of Jordan. Yet the higher I climbed on the career ladder, the emptier I felt deep inside. It took marriage and motherhood and the birth of four sons in quick succession to give me the spiritual fulfillment and grounding happiness I had been searching to discover all of my life.

     My children captured me, and I surrendered, at first reluctantly, and finally ecstatically, leaving the adrenaline-laced field of daily journalism. When my high-voltage friends with big jobs accused me of abandoning my feminist ideals, this is how I responded: "There is nothing I can do that is more powerful or liberating as a women than to surrender to Being There, fully and forcefully, for my children."

     The word surrender means, "to yield to the power of another." I believe that is what we must do as mothers of young children -- surrender to the higher power of Being There to raise them. A joyful acceptance of this concept of surrender overwhelmed me one day while I was feeding lunch to my four sons, ages three and under. Crouched on the floor scraping up cold pieces of scrambled egg off the gray carpet, I was overcome with a deep knowing that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, that I was becoming who I was meant to be -- a mother on her knees suspended in a Here and Now filled with love. Once you allow yourself to wallow in the second-by-second caring for your children, you can come to know a profound peace. I'd been seeking to reach that bliss for years.
Iris Krasnow

SURRENDERING TO MOTHERHOOD

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