““But then I realized, they didn't mean their own mothers. Not those weak women, those victims. Drug addicts, shopaholics, cookie bakers. They didn't mean the women who let them down, who failed to help them into womanhood. They didn't mean the mothers washing dishes wishing they'd never married, the ones in the ER, saying they fell down the stairs, not the ones in prison saying loneliness is the human condition. They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of a fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide hipped mother, auwesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mothers big enough, wide enough, for us to hide in, to sink down to the bottom of, mothers who would breathe for us when we could not breathe anymore, mothers who would fight for us, who would kill for us, and die for us.””
![“She was a desperate woman with frailties just like her, temptations just like her, a woman who had needs, a woman who loved almost to the point of there being no more her anymore, a woman who probably cried too much, just like her, a woman afraid, wanting to believe rather than believing [...]” quote by Susan Vreeland](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/41a/susan-vreeland-15670_belief_she-was-a-desperate-woman-with-frailties_3090169.jpg)
