Connect with the birth growth change joy love and inner strength of mothering. Take a spiritual voyage through blessings prayers anecdotes and meditations about the sacred undertaking that is motherhood. These words of hope and healing pain and promise are for all motherstraditional single adoptive foster step and bereavedand are drawn from many faith traditions including Christian Jewish Buddhist Hindu Muslim and Native American. Special multifaith ceremonies offer ways to honor many aspects of motherhood such as becoming a new mother either through birth or adoption welcoming children into the larger community and acknowledging the experience of weaning a child. Insightful and wise the expressions in this soulful collection illustrate the paradox of motherhood and will speak to your heart as you see motherhood in a whole newand holyway. Contributions stem from both ancient and contemporary sources and many contributions were written specifically for this book. Contributors Maya Angelou Dev Arjan Isaac Babel AbdulBah Sarah K. Bain Winona L. Baker Ellen Bass Rev. Susie Crawford Beil Big Thunder Kathryn Black Johanna Bodenstab Emily Bront Martin Buber DeLona CamposDavis Jane Welsh Carlyle Gilbert Keith Chesterton Rev. Linda Morgan Clark Fr. Robert DeGrandis Anita Diamant Mary Douthitt George Eliot Saint Ephrem Euripides Kathleen Finley Saint Francis of Assisi Erich Fromm Robert Frost Saint Gertrude the Great Kahlil Gibran Maria Mazziotti Gillan Stacey Goldblatt Grace of Monaco Hafiz Leigh Hancock Hanh Thich Nhat Fr. Edward Hays Margaret Hebblethwaite Jackie Heil Sibilla Hershey Lauri Hewitt Rev. Gina HiltonVanOsdall Alicia Hokanson Gerard Manley Hopkins Jill E.Hopkins Margaret Anne Huffman Linda Lawrence Hunt Crystal Hurdle Jane Richardson Jensen Saint John of the Cross Julian of Norwich Kabir Hazrat Inayat Khan Charles Kingsley Laurie Klein Jacqueline Kramer Jean Baptiste Lacordaire Fiona Tinwei Lam Anne Lamott