What It Really Means To Love Like A Mother

She stands in the kitchen looking at me. Her hair is stringy and needs to be brushed. Shes shifting from side to side uncomfortably, unsure of what Im doing there or what to say.

Her brother overdosed last night. Her mother is my good friend, and the swirling vortex of grief and community sucked me into her kitchen, stocking the refrigerator and tidying the counters because that feels like something when theres nothing to be done.

I dont know how to make lasagna, she says, glancing at the pan Im sliding into the freezer.

Thats okay, sweetheart. I can show you. I begin to walk her through how to preheat the oven.

She interrupts me. I dont know what to do next.

I pause, and look at the shattered girl standing next to me. No one does, Love. Sometimes, when really terrible things happen, nothing comes next. Sometimes we just sit together in the awfulness.

I havent seen this lanky 22 year-old in years. I knew her when she was in grade school. As the years passed she breezed in and out of my girls nights with her mom, and was off to college faster than any of us expected. Shes a woman I dont know.

But I know her today. Today shes a girl standing in the kitchen in search of a mother, and she found me.

I stroke her hair and hold her hand and we stand together silently as oven beeps.

I started loving like a mother sixteen years ago.

Simon was born after a day-long labor, angry red and screaming. The doctor held him up and for a split second, I thought hed pulled the baby out from under the table, like a medical magician. I expected to feel overwhelmed by love and gratitude and motherhood, but I felt none of those things. I just felt tired.

That disconnected feeling lasted through the next day. The nurses would bring him to me and wed say all the right things and go through the motions of nursing and burping and changing, but it felt like an elaborate game of make believe. This wasnt my baby. This wasnt real.

In the pre-dawn hours of our last day, I was walking the halls with my IV pole, following my doctors orders to move my body. I was alone in the corridor and heard a baby in the nursery start to cry.

Thats Simon, I thought, and then instantly laughed at myself. How would I know Simons cry? Id just met him, after all. I kept walking.

On my next lap, I met a nurse pushing a bassinet out of the nursery.

Mrs. Chapman! Youre up! I was just bringing your little boy to you. Simon was crying and I didnt want him to wake the others. He needs his mommy.

And the mother in me was born.

Years and many children later, I often fool myself into thinking that the business of mothering is carpooling and filling out forms and sitting in the bleachers. I confuse mothering with picking up shoes and clearing the table and shouting up the stairs that its time to go for real. I diminish mothering with prefixes and qualifiers: single, divorced, foster, and step.

Im wrong. Thats just the daily noise of it.

Mothering is so much bigger than grocery lists and school projects.

Mothering happens when the child in front of you needs deep and unconditional love. It happens when she needs a safe place to land. It happens when he needs a champion.

Ive mothered a thirteen-year-old boy whod just come out to his deeply religious parents. It hadnt gone well. He was worried hed broken his family and hurt his mother and might never fit in. Simon dragged him off the bus and brought him home for mothering. I fed him meatloaf and mashed potatoes and reminded him his mother and father loved him beyond reason. Sometimes parents get a little lost in the details, but that doesnt make the love any less real.

Ive mothered a four-year-old girl who was already so banged up and broken shed been through three foster homes. She was awful. She locked my baby Caden in a box and shoved him under the bed. She set fires. It was everything I could do to advocate for her, pushing for therapy and medication. Truthfully, it was hard to like her, but for that chapter in our lives, she was mine to mother, and I loved her fiercely.

Loving like a mother isnt unique to me.

My childrens group leaders, teachers, stepmother, grandmothers and aunts have loved them like mothers. Their friends mothers have set places at their dinner tables and offered a shoulder when they needed one. Im quite sure I dont know the half of how my children have benefitted from the rich love of other mothers. It's a strange feeling to walk around grateful for something you know is happening but haven't witnessed directly.

Loving like a mother isnt bound by blood or paperwork or gender. It isnt defined by the word that comes before mother. It isnt found in limited quantities. Its presence doesnt diminish the love of other mothers.

Loving like a mother is simply defined by the object of that love. When you love someone unconditionally, in the way they need to be loved in that moment, you love like a mother. And the world is richer for it.

Kate Chapman is a mom and stepmom to six children, ages 8-15. She writes about her modern-day Brady Bunch adventures at This Life in Progress . Drawing on her extensive experience as a coach and a background in psychology and sociology, Kate addresses the tricky topics of divorce, coparenting and blended families. Follow Kate on Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram for divorced parent and blended family support.