To Have and to Hold Quotes

“That our virtues in one context may be vices in another is but one of the many profound lessons our children teach us best. They teach us that with fierce love comes deep fear, and that we cannot have joy without also inviting sorrow. They teach us that life does not go the way we planned. They teach us that we, and they, are imperfect. They teach us that no one emerges from childhood unscathed—that we did not get all our needs met as children, and neither will they. They teach us that the only constant is change. They teach us that we are neither as fabulous nor as horrible as we thought. Motherhood not only transforms us; it also forces us to relinquish our illusions about who we were all along.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“The true opposite of depression is neither gaiety nor the absence of pain, but vitality—the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“Rubin’s conceptualization of fog happiness helps resolve what appear to be contradictory research findings about the happiness of parents. Ask a young mother to pause from playing with her fifteen-month-old at eleven a.m. and indicate her current happiness level, and her answer will be about the same as when she’s vacuuming at four p.m. Ask that same woman when she’s eighty-five years old what her top three sources of happiness were, and “being a mother” or “caring for my children” will surely make the list. Vacuuming, not so much. Immediate joy and fun in parenting are scattered stars in the great black sky of strain, boredom, and unrelenting responsibility in parenting. But when the joy comes, it comes insisting. And when we take the long view and ascribe meaning to our life’s activities, little else competes for first place with raising our very own human beings.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“When expectations are not met (as invariably happens), the search for the right solution begins; in turn, this search adds an unnecessary layer of suffering to what would otherwise be just the pain of motherhood. First we find that motherhood is far more difficult than we thought it would be, then we observe (incorrectly) that every other mother seems to be sailing along just fine, and finally we conclude (at great cost to our self-esteem) that we are doing something wrong. The sense that what we’re doing isn’t the right thing to do, or that what we’re feeling isn’t the right way to feel, leaves us feeling inadequate, or worse. Meanwhile, we’re expending precious energy attempting to pinpoint what it is we should be doing differently to make our babies fit the mold and adhere to expectations of development or internal visions of how things should be.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“And I think, This is the beauty and the curse of motherhood. Displaced by a person I love so fiercely that I don’t mind. The thing is, it was a long, twisty road to being able to say “I don’t mind.” And that mentality doesn’t always apply. Sometimes I do mind, thank you very much. As Susan Maushart says in The Mask of Motherhood, “A woman accustomed to taking autonomy for granted may find the experience of newborn motherhood strangely claustrophobic as she struggles to fit two people into a space formerly reserved for one.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“More often than we realize, our uneasy and guilty feelings as mothers originate at least in part from needs of our own that went unmet when we were children.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“and she wanted to spend the day shopping. Almost in passing, she mentioned that her parents were only taking her older child for the day, because the baby, of course,”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“Far less intuitive and also true is this: the demands and restrictions of parenting actually create gender roles that were far less pronounced before.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“produced by parenthood? Indeed, those things are true. Far less intuitive and also true is this: the demands and restrictions of parenting actually create gender roles that were far less pronounced before.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“It’s not enough to say that the culture of postpartum care and support in the United States is subpar. It’s more accurate to say that new mothers are thrown to the wolves.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“Sometimes we are angry, because our children do not listen to us, and sometimes we are bored. What we don’t always realize when we’re in the midst of these states is that none of them will last. We assume we are in some kind of permanent new reality. Following a toddler around the yard, it can feel as if this is what life has become.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“The words in my head were, Why the f* won’t this child sleep? and they played over and over in the sea of anger and self-pity that was my inner experience. My expectations, my convictions about what a toddler was supposed to do (take a nap, even if it required a little coaxing), created a context in which I was blind to the many other options available to me. For example, I could’ve stopped trying to get him to take a nap at all. I could’ve set a timer for thirty minutes and promised myself I’d only try for that long.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“There are some mothers for whom the chaos is barely noticeable, and others for whom it is a crippling problem. The majority of us, like me and like Julia, are somewhere in between, perhaps vacillating between tolerating the chaos just fine and feeling for a moment that we might rather be dead than continue to live amid such mayhem.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“No new mother is unfazed by the changes a baby brings, but people who thrive on having a sense of control and agency, who put a high premium on productivity, and who feel calm only when “on top of things” are likely to experience significant challenges when a baby enters the picture.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“There are plenty of other ways she could frame her current struggles (for instance, “Sleep deprivation has really started to take a toll”), but the interpretation she has chosen is one in which her very personhood has been altered, and not for the better. It’s a frame that adds a layer of unfortunate, unnecessary suffering to the inevitable pain of her daily life.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“Pregnant women are not sufficiently warned, if they are warned at all, about how a person so tiny can play havoc so enormous on the lifestyle they once knew. We speak in vague language like, “Oh, your life is about to change!” Everyone knows to expect a big change. Hardly anybody knows that that change can feel a lot like grief.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“The change was in the balance, in the frequency with which I felt listless, angry, and numb compared to the frequency with which I felt energized, peaceful, and content. For me, the scales had always been tipped in favor of contentment, and this was no longer true.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“To become mothers is to become more fully aware of who we are. To become coparents is to come into greater contact with our partners, and to become more fully aware of who they are. In order to find well-being in the terrain of motherhood, we must accept the loss of so many illusions, not least of which are illusions about the bliss children will bring and the extent to which our spouses will share the burden and support us. The greatest loss of all may be our illusions about who we are and what kind of mothers we will be. When these illusions are acknowledged and grieved, we find some measure of peace in the acceptance of how things actually are and who we actually are.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“Immediate joy and fun in parenting are scattered stars in the great black sky of strain, boredom, and unrelenting responsibility in parenting. But when the joy comes, it comes insisting. And when we take the long view and ascribe meaning to our life’s activities, little else competes for first place with raising our very own human beings.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“In her memoir of motherhood, Operating Instructions, Anne Lamott writes, “It’s so easy and natural to race around too much, letting days pass in a whirl of being busy and mildly irritated, getting fixed on solutions to things that turn out to be just farts in the windstorm.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“So many nights, exhausted or just impatient, I have been eager for my children’s bedtime. One kid’s chatter barely registers in my ear because it’s the same chatter I’ve been hearing all day. The other kid’s chain of requests for a sip of water, to be tucked in (again), for another sip of water, to turn the hallway light on, feels like fingernails on a chalkboard. Minutes later, as I peak into their room and see that they have each fallen into slumber, I see all sweetness and splendor in their faces. I want to lie down and hold them close. I wonder what that last bit of chatter was that I tuned out. Whether it was something important about my child’s world. A tiny voice echoes in my head, “can I please have another sip of water?” And I hear it more clearly now as “It makes me feel secure and cared for when you bring it to me.” Their care and wellbeing matter more to me than anything and I feel at a cellular level the honor and joy of being their mom. Now that they’re asleep.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“Prøv lige at overveje den her formulering:

So many nights, exhausted or just impatient, I have been eager for my children’s bedtime. One kid’s chatter barely registers in my ear because it’s the same chatter I’ve been hearing all day. The other kid’s chain of requests for a sip of water, to be tucked in (again), for another sip of water, to turn the hallway light on, feels like fingernails on a chalkboard. Minutes later, as I peak into their room and see that they have each fallen into slumber, I see all sweetness and splendor in their faces. I want to lie down and hold them close. I wonder what that last bit of chatter was that I tuned out. Whether it was something important about my child’s world. A tiny voice echoes in my head, “can I please have another sip of water?” And I hear it more clearly now as “It makes me feel secure and cared for when you bring it to me.” Their care and wellbeing matter more to me than anything and I feel at a cellular level the honor and joy of being their mom. Now that they’re asleep.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“This means that two women, whether friends, a mother-daughter dyad, sisters, or a same-sex couple, are likely to care for each other in a way that is arguably deeper and more consistent than any dyad involving a male. This may seem counterintuitive—the notion that reciprocal caring is, or at least should be, greatest in our committed romantic partnerships is a widespread one—but it is consistent with abundant research demonstrating that men reap more health benefits from marriage than women do, and that husbands report feeling understood and affirmed by their spouses far more than wives do.17”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“So many of the women who come to me for therapy are tormented by their own ambivalence. They want more time with the baby, but also more time alone. Their children bring them indescribable joy, but also make them crazy. They are grateful for their husbands’ calm and stability while simultaneously resenting them for being less affected by the transition to parenthood. They are crying in hopeless frustration one moment and feeling surges of love and affection deeper than they’ve ever known in the next. “I’m losing my mind,” these women say. “No, you’re not,” I respond. “You’ve lost many things now that you’re a mother, but your mind is not one of them.” In actuality, these women have found their minds; they have found crevices and corners they didn’t know existed and hadn’t planned to visit. The same is true of their hearts.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“When expectations are not met (as invariably happens), the search for the right solution begins; in turn, this search adds an unnecessary layer of suffering to what would otherwise be just the pain of motherhood. First we find that motherhood is far more difficult than we thought it would be, then we observe (incorrectly) that every other mother seems to be sailing along just fine, and finally we conclude (at great cost to our self-esteem) that we are doing something wrong. The sense that what we’re doing isn’t the right thing to do, or that what we’re feeling isn’t the right way to feel, leaves us feeling inadequate, or worse. Meanwhile, we’re expending precious energy attempting to pinpoint what it is we should be doing differently to make our babies fit the mold and adhere to expectations of development or internal visions of how things should be. Without the extra layers of suffering caused by unmet expectations, our misguided attempts to deny or suppress our feelings, and our self-critical interpretative frames, we would simply feel the pain. Of sleep deprivation. Of missing our old lives. Of not having enough time for ourselves. These things are all painful, but pain is far more tolerable than suffering.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma

“Confined to the house with a napping baby, or too constrained by the dual demands of work and motherhood to fit in face-to-face time with friends, she enters a digital world that promises connection and sharing. More often than not, she emerges feeling lonely, anxious, and unsure of herself.”
― Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma