by Kayla Harrison

Google defines the act of “mothering” as, “bringing up with care and affection” or “giving birth to.”

Though I am not a mother to children, I am still a mother.

I am a mother to my ideas, to the words I write down on a page, to my stories. I am a mother to my kindness, making sure it’s birthed in every conversation. I am a mother to my body, giving it all that it needs to survive.


I am a mother to my soul, nurturing it with good music and sunshine.

Like my own mother, I have a heart that beats with passion, a heart that knows it beats not for me, but for others. I give what I have to those that don’t.

I am a mother to those closest to me, making sure they know they are loved.


I am a mother to those I don’t know, those I see on the streets with no home.


I am a mother to those struggling to find hope, those that cry out wondering if anyone hears them. I am a mother to those begging for something to make them feel again.

Like my own mother, I just want everyone to be happy.


I want everyone to know someone cares.


I want everyone to see they’re more than their past and their mistakes.

Being a mother is more than having children.


It’s feeling — maybe a little too much some days.


It’s caring for something or someone with all that you have.


It’s putting time and effort into making a work of art — a masterpiece. It’s loving, with every ounce of being.

I care and I feel and I love. I create and I mold.
 I hug and I hold tight.
And though I am not a mother to children, I am still a mother.

2018 Kayla Harrison

Kayla Harrison is a Writing Arts graduate student at Rowan University, editor at The Urban Howl, and freelance writer for Business News Daily. Her goal in life is to find those who’ve lost their sense of wonder and guide them to rediscovering it. To Kayla, reading is a way of discovering the world, and writing a way of making sense of it all. To learn more about her and her writing, check out her blog insearchofthewritedirection.weebly.com

Motherhood is a hand-to-hand, heart-to-heart, connection formed by being there.

Two years now I have watched the most beautiful bond develop between a child, and a mother who thought she may never be. It has become so obvious that this kind of love is more than DNA.

The woman had never expressed to her family the desire to be a parent, yet she — one who always held such a tight relationship with her own mother — decided in her teenage years that motherhood was something she wanted to experience.

A single woman who had developed a successful business, she put off a lot of personal stuff as the business prospered and met goals and objectives until she decided she could not ignore her personal goal any longer.

A few years back she announced to her family the intention to adopt.

Two years ago, after all the legal and leg work that is part of the process, she got the call. Her baby had been born.

Life changes, just like that.

This child has been given a full and complete life with loving aunts and uncles, a doting grandfather, and cousins who arrived about the same time. The mother, a good friend to so many, has support beyond her close family. You hear the expression that it takes a village to raise a child, well this child was born into one happy, committed village.

The woman has also been given the complete life she was craving, and one she deserves. In the process she has changed. Perhaps not in ways immediately noticeable, as I’ve only been learning or getting to know her further through the past years, I can see the changes.

I can see the love. I can see this child becoming so much like her Mom. I see traits and habits, and similarities, as this pair adjust to each other. Adoption was only a process for realizing a relationship that was meant to be.

Motherhood is not about flesh and blood, not always. Motherhood is more than being there. Motherhood, certainly in this case, is an opportunity for learning, and for growing, and for being who you were meant to be.

Children learn by watching, intuition, and trial and error.

Mothers learn by watching, intuition, and trial and error.

Nature and nurture equal forces, we all learn by watching and experiencing life and love.

Refraction. Reflection.
Gradient tones of expression,
landscapes or history,
our light rarely follows a straight line.
Curves. Diagonally,
adjustment required in space or
sign, it seeps through cracks
moves forcefully beyond sublime.

Unusually unaware,
we cannot control the capacity, or
silence, of corresponding darkness.
An unlikely presence of another mind.
Intimacy initially.
To those who dare expose themselves,
our light will not be altered
but eternally fortified.

Transcendent existence,
born unto an incidental state, we
cannot separate stigma from strata.
Dust on the wind, particles of matter.
Fragmentation, alienation,
morals to immortality, holding tight
all we believe is crucial.
Our life rarely follows a straight line.

©2018 j.g. lewis

Lazy summer days to an entire year of honour, I am
celebrated as much as scorned. The beast
allowed into your home and bed, my definition or
exhibition of loyalty, and love, is to be questioned
as it is accepted.

Companionship influenced
by kind voice or treats offered. Easily convinced.
Temptation or transgressions, it takes little
to capture my attention, much more to hold it.
Contrary to belief, I cannot be trained.

Pedigree required to act on command. A mongrel,
comfortable in its identity, knows better
ways of the street.

Not meant to stand still. Often,
I have strained at the leash, welts on my neck
from collar tight, firm hand, and fierce effort.
I have and will, without notice, escape
into the greater world.
Mischief has been made in the night.

I have howled at many moons, carelessly run
with the pack of unsuitable delinquents, and lain down
with bitches of convenience who led me astray.

I’ve sniffed, slobbered ravenously,
at opportunities seized. Feral at heart, mindlessly foolish,
each moment an occurrence to be appreciated
and savoured. Biologically stimulated,
there is no thought process to primal urge.
Even Pavlov was mistaken when it came to reward.

I have pissed in places I shouldn’t have; begged
for food, release, comfort, or companionship.
Deliriously exhausted, I will curl up
on your comfortable couch and offer no reason
or excuse for my whereabouts or behaviour.

Sleeping dogs lie. Dream of what happened
and when again, ears twitch in afternoon silence.
Another night soon will come.

Scratch my back until I growl,
receive my wet nose and attention unconditionally.
Hose me down when I smell, take me for a car ride
once in a while, so I can see other possibilities.
Understand, however, my need for independence.
I will run out, dart into traffic, as
I try to find my own way.

Yes, I will stray, yet miraculously or mysteriously,
always find my way home. I am a dog.

© 2018 j.g. lewis

Why don’t you meet me in Paris? Half a globe away,
another lifetime. They write songs about the city,
in April. I have never been. In any season.
Spring has yet to find its way here,
so Paris awaits.
Rendezvous. City of lights, city for lovers.
Should we not taste all Paris could be? Could we
not see nights from a tiny apartment,
streets below filled with people like us.
Experience I do not yet know, but I desire
to feel the city against your skin.

I have been told one night in Paris
is like a year in any other place. Language
I do not understand, but the art speaks to me.
Culture not found anywhere but Paris.
History unto itself.
Art knows no boundaries, no geographic space,
yet Paris, as I have been led to believe, is
the capital city.
Hemingway wrote of Paris, Fitzgerald as well.
Picasso found poetry in Paris, the painter found himself,
adopted the city, or it him.

Artists, from anywhere, are meant
to spend time in Paris, to discover, to recover,
from wherever they have lived. You don’t
get that feeling anywhere else.
Or so I am told. I need Paris.
I would write in Paris, I would paint,
perhaps on the street, because I can only imagine
what others have lived.
I can only imagine. In Paris. In poetry.
In April. We would meet in Paris,
we may never leave.

© 2018 j.g. lewis