The erosion of the self that comes with motherhood has been very difficult on every meaningful level—personally and politically. (What a world of pain is contained in those cool words.) But it’s also been the making of me. It’s taught me how to be a person who is for something other than myself. I’m not saying the childless don’t learn that lesson as well—I’m saying that, in my case, it was motherhood that taught it to me.
