The magic of motherhood is how it manages to drain and fill you at once and always when you need it the most.
In her first collection of poetry, Bunmi Laditan captures the honesty, rawness, sheer joy and total chaos of motherhood. With the compassion and wit that made her a social media sensation among mothers around the world, Laditan puts into evocative and relatable words what so many of us feel but can’t quite express. For mothers who love their children with a fiery fierceness but know what it is to feel crushed at the end of those long days, Dear Mother is like a warm hug that says, “I get it.”
Bunmi Laditan is an award-winning, Webby-nominated writer from California who lives in Quebec, Canada, with her family. She’s contributed to the New York Times, Parenting magazine and the Huffington Post, and is best known for the satirical Twitter account The Honest Toddler, as well as her bestselling books Toddlers Are A**holes: It’s Not Your Fault and Confessions of a Domestic Failure, which immediately became must-reads for her thousands of fans and moms everywhere. Dear Mother is her first collection of poetry.
www.BunmiLaditan.com
DEAR
MTHER
Poems on the Hot Mess of Motherhood
Bunmi Laditan
to the One who loves me
and knows me by name
Contents
Love
Where Can You Find My Heart?
The Audacity of a Child’s Demands for Love
What Kind of Magic Enchants
Most Days I Wake Up Tired
Motherhood Has Taught Me
When I Squeeze You
What Does It Mean to Be a Mother?
As You Grow into the Person You Were Meant to Be
On Days I Don’t Feel Loved
To Embrace My Child
How Can It Be
To Me There is Nothing More Beautiful
I Know I May Forget This Day
Motherhood Opened Up the Floodgates
For Mother’s Day
When I Tell a Man
I Weave My Love Around You, Child
An Angel Told Me That Love
You Were Not Born of My Body
Children Don’t Just Grow Up
I Want You to Grow
Laughter
The Toddler
Motherhood Requires More Sacrifice Than I Realized
If Muffin Tops
Dear Mother
What You Lose in Sleep
Showers Are Both
They Say You Should Do One Thing
Gift Ideas for Her
What a Pity
I’ve Never Scaled Everest
You Don’t Know Frustration
Dear Mother
At Some Point
If You Can Say
Is It Even Dinner
To Make a Two-Year-Old
If My Laundry is Not Alive
Dear Mother
I’ve Done the Math
Only Parents and Medical Professionals
Dear Mother
Time Flies When You’re Having Fun
It’s My Opinion
Dear Mother
A Four-Year-Old is a Cross Between
Modern Parents Don’t Ask Babysitters for References
Dear Mother Waking Up Before the Sun Again
Tears
On the Nights That Are Too Much
There’s No Such Thing As Strong Women
It’s Always the Innocent Mothers
It Feels Good to Cry Sometimes
The Most Exhausting Part Of Being a Mom
Dear Mother
There’s No One
Oh Mother
Motherhood is a Madness I Only Wish to Sink Deeper Into
Your Home is Enough
Your Worth as a Mother
Nothing’s Wrong, It’s Just Hard
If You Can’t Figure Out
I Never Realize How Tired I Am
I Want to Say Sweet Things at Night
Lie Down and Wait for Me
I Don’t Hate You
Dear Mother
Sometimes We Give from the Heart
The Hardest Task as a Mother
Dear Mother
These Days, I Prefer to Be Alone
I Live with My Back Against a Bulging Door
Dear Mother
Depression Isn’t Sadness
In Real Wars
Anxiety Isn’t About Being Shy
Dear Mother
In a Mother’s Love
Mothers with Invisible Children
Dear Mother
You Were Supposed to Be Born Today
I Don’t Know When You Died
When Night is at Its Darkest
You’re Still My Child, Angel
On Those Long
Dear Mother
Madness
The Paradox of Motherhood
When I’m with Them
Nobody Tells You
I Wish I Was Your Grandmother
There Are Two Mothers Inside of Me
It’s Tempting to Hold Each Moment
As Exhausted as I Am
It’s Tiresome Feigning
Some Days I Feel Like the Poison
I Can Get So Lost
Motherhood is the Only Time
Camera Roll
Sometimes I Don’t Know If I’m Going to Survive
He Said “Mommy”
The Magic of Motherhood
Dear Mother
Raising
Some Days I Can’t Believe
Motherhood Has a Way of Taking All of Your
Dear Mother
The Triumph of Motherhood Cannot Be Found
What I’m Most Afraid Of
Every Day I Have the Choice
We Don’t Have Children
When the Nurse Yelled “Push”
People Seem Ordinary
Dear Mother
Children Weren’t Designed to Be
I Pray They Don’t Notice
We Can Talk to Our Children About Love
The Difference Between
Whatever Soul Pains
You Have My Eyes
Every Once and Again
I’ve Learned That the Best Parents
Dear Mother
If My Children Grow Up to Be
Everyone Tells You About
I Want My Children To
I Know Enough About
I Didn’t Pray Much Before Having Children
It’s Taken Many Years
My Wish for You
The World Doesn’t Deserve You, Child
Dear Mother
I Didn’t Realize How Dangerous It Is
Over My Dead Body
I Believe These Boys
“You Can Get It Yourself”
That Moment When Your Child
The Stillness of a House
Will They Remember All the Yelling?
Apology
In These Days
On the Bed of My Imminent Passing
If I Could Give You
Dear Mother
Some Days I Wish Your Heart
Rising
Who is Going to Raise Me
Motherhood Transforms You
If I’d Known How Lonely
What If the Children We Have Are No Accident_
I Hope I Look
M
y Motto Began as "Breast is Best"
My Biggest Fear
Motherhood Doesn’t Push You
Dear Mother
Motherhood Exposes
They Say You’ve Made It When the Bills All Get Paid
One Day You Wake Up
I Liked You on Our First Date
There is Nothing That Melts the Heart
The Best Part Of
Love in the Time of Children
Don’t Say You Love Me
Dear Mother
She is a Single Mother Married
Dear Mother
If You’re Tired of Me
If I Promise to Blame Myself
Dear Mother
As Much as I Want Him
Dear Mother
Women Don’t Marry for a Partner
I Don’t Want to Hear About
My Secret Desire is For
Dear Mother
I’m Not Broken
From Time to Time
The Unspoken Work of Motherhood
On the Day They Handed Out Brains in Heaven
Of All the Things I Pass Down to My Children
Dear Mother
I Wish I Could Love
Be Careful How You Speak About Yourself
What a Shame It Would Be
When I Was Younger
If Babies Ruin Bodies
Love Tore Through My Body
I Don’t Like Being a Mother
Think of Yourself as a Garden
If Motherhood Has Taught Me Anything
Labor Never Ends
Dear Mother
LOVE
Where can you find my heart?
It is no longer locked away
afraid of the cold world.
keep up with what strangers want me to be.
Nor is it attached to my sleeve
ready to be broken by
a harsh word or glance.
My heart can be found
hidden
in the small, plump hand
of this child I call mine
who cares not what I look like
or have achieved
but wants only
to rest in my arms
until dawn breaks.
The audacity of a child’s
demands for love
are only matched
by the ridiculous depths
of the love their parents
have for them
What kind of magic enchants
the well of motherhood?
Mere hours after my ragged
bucket scraped the last
drops of mercy from the
echoey depths
I find myself
once again
at my child’s bedside
hypnotized by a face
so breathtakingly serene
And as I slide my hand
across the softest of cheeks
somewhere inside me
I feel the waters
that hours ago had been depleted
begin to rise
Most days I wake up tired
No longer young and excited
to see the sun rise
But when I see your sleepy face
and hold your pajamaed body
warm and heavy from a long night’s sleep
I find the strength to give today
a chance
MOTHERHOOD HAS TAUGHT ME
THAT LOVE IS NOT
A FEELING
IT IS A BURNING DESIRE
TO TRY A LITTLE HARDER
THAN I DID
YESTERDAY
When I squeeze you
hold your small body in mine
my wounds stop bleeding
and the dull ache of adulthood
for a moment
ceases to throb
you, my child, are the antidote
to this life
What does it mean to be a mother?
Is the role defined by the cleaning,
cooking, scheduling, kissing,
the tired hugs, the stories read?
The truth is that anyone can do that
but not everyone lies awake in the dark
staring at your face
begging the angels
to cover you with their wings.
As you grow into the person you were meant to be
remember, my love, that it’s okay
to slip
fall
fail
cry
lose
come in dead last
sit this one out with your head in your hands
You can’t disappoint me as you walk these slippery rocks of life
for I adored you before you knew what medals were
and applauded your heartbeat and first breath as magnificent victories
If there’s one truth I want you to know
tuck into your heart and seal with my kiss
it’s that I don’t love you because you’re perfect
I love you because you’re mine
On days I don’t feel loved
evenings I drown in my solitude
sure that no one’s heart will ever flutter
at my presence again
you run into my arms
and remind me
that to someone
I am everything
To embrace my child
is to feel my entire body come alive
with the kind of love
I thought was only reserved
for fairy tales
How can it be that
the entire world tells me
a million ways that I’m not enough
but you
my child
even if you could
wouldn’t change a thing
than a tired mother making room on her lap
for a child who wants only to melt
into the safety
of her warmth
I know I may forget this day
how you look in those
little blue overalls
but please God
don’t let me ever forget
the sound of my child’s
laughter
Motherhood opened up the floodgates
and filled my deepest wells
with watery emotion
leaving me soft
and ready to spill buckets
of salty sentiment
at the slightest provocation
whether it be a baby koala
clinging to his mother’s back at the zoo
or a well-worded commercial
For Mother’s Day
I don’t want you to spend
very much.
Kindly bottle the scent
of our baby’s skin
fresh out of the bath
so I can wear it like
perfume.
Wrap his toddlerhood in
shiny paper
topped with a red bow
so that I can return
to any moment I please
after he’s flown away
leaving me with only echoes.
I’ll also take his giggle
in a golden locket
and six frozen baby kisses
sloppy openmouthed
wet against my cheek
th
at I can defrost as needed.
And would it be too bold
to ask for a glove
that allows me to always
feel his hand in mine?
When I tell a man
“I love you”
I mean “You make me happy.”
When I tell my children
“I love you”
I mean
“I would burn it all down
to warm your feet.”
I weave my love around you, child
a thick warm blanket
stitched with my veins
stuffed with my breath
sealed with my kiss
so that if one day they tell you
you are not good enough
you’ll know
they’re lying
An angel told me that love
is the most powerful force in the universe
and I didn’t believe
until I saw steel bend
wood burn
brick shatter into dust
and a mother at 4:21 a.m., who had already
risen more times than she cared to know,
hear her child’s cry
and rise again
You were not born of my body
but from the depths of my heart
my little seedling
planted in the soft earth of my soul
I don’t need to own your tangled roots
to water them
No matter what storms may pass
I will be your sun
singing warm melodies as you grow
stalks and leaves reaching toward the clouded sky
green skin against the pale blue and white tomorrow
How blessed I am to have this flower in my garden
children don’t just grow up
they also grow out
first spilling out of your arms
then your lap
then their car seats
and clothes
but take heart, love,
because the one thing they
can never grow out of
is your heart
I want you to grow
sail, fly, soar
but baby
promise me
that every so often
you’ll return to the nest
and let me look at your wings