On this Mother’s Day, it might seem a little odd to share a poem that focuses not on a mother’s devotion or attention or how much she loves and is loved, but rather, on a child’s need for freedom.

After all, the first line reads, “Your children are not your children.”
Most would answer, “Excuse me? Who bore them, raised them, made sacrifices for them? Of course they’re mine. Who else do they belong to?”

And of course, Gibran answers this. “They are the sons and daughters ofLife’s longing for itself.” What a magnificent line. Life longs to express itself and does so through the children who come. God, Source, is the creative and manifests it’s love and abundance through the newness and self-expression of the child.

On this day when we hail mothers for all they do and motherhood as the ultimate expression of love and sacrifice, let us perhaps dare to also expand our perspective. Let us see the mother-child relationship as a dance between sovereign souls who have manifested and co-created their bonds for mutual growth and expansion. Both teach. Both love. Both are here on a continuum of expansion and evolution.