"I told him that when I find myself pushed past my point of no return—that individual, purely subjective point where my spirit feels broken and I cannot tolerate myself or my child in an utterly heart-wrenching way that I could never have imagined when I was pregnant—I must, nonetheless, be a responsible, compassionate, effective, loving parent. This requires me to dig deep into my well and pull myself back from the edge to a safe place where the smallest successful moment of mothering feels like a worldly triumph. Mothering is hard, hard work. Staying home to raise children is a kind of surrender that can feel strangely and simultaneously forsaking and freeing. There’s melancholy and loneliness at the heart of such a commitment of time, energy and breath. It is the pain of giving one’s self over to love for the ultimate purpose of letting go"

Lu Hanessian, Exploring Ambivalence (March-April 2003), in La Leche League’s publication New Beginnings, p.45.