E
very woman is a daughter and every woman had a mother. The bond of the mother and daughter relationship is so profound, so deep and long-lasting, that women often miss their mothers fifty years after they are gone. Once birthed, a mother/daughter relationship is perhaps immortal. It is in honor of that eternal relationship that we offer this book, not only to every woman who is a daughter or a mother of daughters, but to every person who knows and loves a woman, because their heart will be touched by the stories of love, courage, loss, reunion, sacrifice, redemption and everyday caring that make up this book.
Being a mother is more than a role or an outcome of biology. Mothers are not just those women who give birth to the daughters they raise. To be truly mothered teaches us how to love, how to think, how to grow into our own potential, into our womanhood. At its best, being mothered teaches us to be whole. To mother is to give of oneself in service of another, to truly see and honor another and to care for her. Thankfully, in a world that brings hardship as well as joy, mothers show up in all sorts of wonderful and magical ways.
And daughters, what about them? You will read again and again how daughters come into their mothers’ lives as a gift from heaven. Daughters allow their mothers to see themselves through a new life, to see how they are carried in their daughters and how their daughters are unique and absolutely new. Daughters allow (sometimes push) their mothers into seeing a larger world the new world that their daughters inhabit. Daughters offer their mothers an opportunity to become whole just as mothers offer the same to their daughters.
In celebration of love and wholeness, we invite you to join us in the never-ending story of mothers and daughters.
JACK CANFIELD & MARK VICTOR HANSEN