Mom's Matter

I found this awesome article about a mom deciding to be in pictures with her children, even if she didn't always feel perfect (sometimes, dare-I-say "fat" and "rumpled"...know the feeling too well!).  She realized that is was important for her children to see their mother present in this pictures so that they can see what she looked like and see her with them.  I totally agree!
At the end of this Huffington Post article the author, Allison Tate, has asked other moms to most pictures of themselves and their children.  Of course, I uploaded one of my son and I that I took recently, and though it may not be very flattering, I know we were having fun and being real.
While looking through the pictures: moms with the daughters completing "fun runs," moms goofing off with their kids and making faces, moms breastfeeding newborns right on the delivery bed, I saw a mother whom I can only guess is going through cancer treatment as she has no hair and has "that look" about her and I am floored as I think of all the photo ops I bowed out of because I didn't want to show my fat arms, bad hair and no-makeup face.  And this woman has the courage to go though what I can only imagine as fresh hell and pose smiling happily with her children because she is their mother and she should be in the picture (goddamit!) and then to share that picture with us.  Courageous and supremely inspirational.
Read the awesome article, browse through the adorable pictures and if it doesn't stir something in you, you might be a robot.

"When I look at pictures of my own mother, I don't look at cellulite or hair debacles. I just see her -- her kind eyes, her open-mouthed, joyful smile, her familiar clothes. That's the mother I remember. My mother's body is the vessel that carries all the memories of my childhood. I always loved that her stomach was soft, her skin freckled, her fingers long. I didn't care that she didn't look like a model. She was my mama." -Allison Tate