The Mother In Me: Real-World Reflections on Growing into Motherhood

• Listen to an interview with editor Kathryn Lynard Soper on Everyday Lives Everyday Values with Doug Wright

“In this collection, we describe the realities of mothering young children, from pregnancy through kindergarten. Our purpose is to celebrate this season, to illustrate its unique challenges and delights, to reveal its deep significance,” writes editor Kathryn Lynard Soper.

The Mother in Me is a collection of more than forty essays and poems, each one offering a personal and intimate view of the divinely-appointed role of motherhood. Some of the selections in the book are humorous, others thoughtful, others poignant — yet all of them affirm the richness of motherhood.

Truly, motherhood matters. Not just in the sentimental ways we talk about on Mother's Day, but in the gritty, lovely, everyday realities of walking this path.

Twenty-nine Latter-day Saint mothers delve into the messy richness of the domestic realm and find great beauty and meaning therein. For home is where everything begins — for children and mothers.

The voices in the book are as individual as the experiences they discuss — first-time pregnancies, the miracle of birth, the devastation of miscarriage and stillbirth, the uncertainty of infertility, the blessings of adoption, and the wonder of newborn nights turning into toddler days and pre-school adventures. But these varied voices unite as they show that the transforming journey of motherhood — is also exhilarating.

“This is my first pregnancy — my first everything, it feels like. I wonder vaguely if Eve ever felt as I do. On some theoretical level I know I wanted this — even chose it — but did even Eve pause in her purposefulness when she realized the known world of her peaceful garden was now nonexistent, that in choosing family, she chose to become part of the wildness of creation?” writes Johanna Buchert Smith in the opening essay, Forty Weeks 'til Spring.

The experiences shared in The Mother in Me will make you laugh and cry and hold tightly the little ones in your life.

• Visit the author's website at themotherinme.com