Most liberating thing…”

Repost from @muva_morrison

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“For me, it was the most liberating thing that ever happened to me, having children […] Liberating. Because the demands the children make are not the demands of a normal other. The children’s demands on me were things that nobody else ever asked me to do […] Be a good manager, have a sense of humor; deliver something that somebody can use. And they were not interested in all the things that other people were interested in, like what I was wearing or, you know, if I was sensual, or if I was, you know, all of that went by. […] They want to know, what are you going to do now, today? And somehow, all of the baggage that I had accumulated as a person about what was valuable, so much of that just fell away. And I could not only be me, whatever that was, somebody actually needed me to be that. It’s different from being a daughter. You know, you figure out how to do that. Or it’s different from being a sister. Those children could listen to them, look at them, they make demands that you can live up to. […] If you listen to them, somehow you are able to free yourself from baggage and vanity and all sorts of things and deliver a better self, one that you like. The person that was in me, that I liked best, was the one my children seemed to want. That one. The one; when they walked in the room, do you frown at the children and say, “Pull your socks up, “ or is their presence, you know-also, you begin to see the world through their eyes, again, which are your eyes. I found that extraordinary.”

— Toni Morrison in conversation with Bill Moyers, March 1990

She is pictured here with her sons Slade and Harold at their upstate New York home. The photographer was Bernard Gotfryd.

#MothersDay