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 mothers--traditional, single, adoptive, foster, step and bereaved--and 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 new--and holy--way.

Contributions stem from both ancient and contemporary sources, and many contributions were written specifically for this book.

Contributors:

Maya Angelou - Dev Arjan -Isaac Babel - 'Abdu'l-Bahá - Sarah K. Bain - Winona L. Baker - Ellen Bass - Rev. Susie Crawford Beil - Big Thunder - Kathryn Black - Johanna Bodenstab - Emily Brontë - Martin Buber - DeLona Campos-Davis - 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 Hilton-VanOsdall - 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 - Lao-Tzu - D. H. Lawrence - Dr. Donald Liebert - Rev. Lauren J. McFeaters - Rev. Dr. Henry McKeating - Lauren McLaughlin - Rosemary Bray McNatt - Maude Meehan - Amy Klauke Minato -Mirabai -Gabriela Mistral (pseudonym for Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga) - Janet Morley - Claire Rudolf Murphy - Sarah Napthali - Sister Nivedita (Margaret E. Noble) - Gunilla Norris - Theodore Parker - Christine Ryan Paulus - Margaret G. Payne - William Penn - Petronius - Po Chü-i - Jan Reynolds - Rivage (pseudonym for Mary Newman) - William H. Robinson - Christina Rossetti - George William Russell - Sappho - Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso - Meghan Nuttall Sayres - Edythe Haendel Schwartz - Ramprasad Sen - William Shakespeare - Trish Shields - Masaoka Shiki - Sadhu Sundar Singh - Mirabai Starr - Janeen Steer - Jonathan Swift - Rabindranath Tagore - Henry David Thoreau - Tukaram - Mark Twain - Miguel de Unamuno - Swami Vivekananda - Gloria Waggoner - Sophia Waldenberg - Jeanne Murray Walker - Robert E.Webber - John Woodroffe - Virginia Woolf