How to Describe My Mother: Local Writer and Guest Blogger Sara Biren Shares Her Insights on Motherhood | Maris Ehlers Photography

What one word would you use to describe your mother?

For my mother, generosity.

My mother married at a young age in the early 1950s and had her first child at eighteen.   Over the next 21 years, she had six more children and she has been giving of herself endlessly ever since.  In her own small way, my mother has made this world a better place.  

My mother gave us opportunities to learn and be challenged; she took us to the Bookmobile and later, the tiny library in town; she let us read the World Book Encyclopedia and National Geographic.  She gave us chores (mine were birdbaths and bathrooms) to teach us responsibility and work ethic.  She gave us choices, sending us outside to play, to create our own games, to fight and learn how to get along – or not.  She gave us rules and she gave us freedom.  She gave us guidance, the tools to make decisions, to make mistakes, to learn right from wrong, to do the right thing, to do the wrong thing.   She gave us a home and welcomed us back – of the seven of us, only two have not moved back in at some point in our adult lives. 

She gave as much as she could, all the while showing by example that it was important to be generous with friends, neighbors, the school, the church, charities.  She gave support and sympathy and salads for funerals.  

She is still generous with her love, her time, her resources, her solicited and/or unsolicited advice. She is there for us whenever we need her, even though we are all grown up and have homes, children, and challenges of our own.  No matter what, if I need my mother – for a recipe or cooking advice, for a couple of hours of child care, for someone to listen to my rants – she is here for me, still giving, always generous. 

I am grateful for my mother’s generosity to me, my dad, my brothers and sisters, to my friends, my husband, and my children.  I am grateful for the example that she set to give to those in need.   Over the years I have thanked her for all of this – and so much more – but it seems that the words thank you don’t say enough.  

I know that I am not nearly as generous as my mother.  As Mother’s Day approaches, as I reflect on my mother and her generosity, I hope to change that as a way to honor her and to thank her.  Someday I hope to be half as generous as my mother has been, to set an example for my children as she has done for me, and in my own small way, make the world a better place. 

Sara when she was still small enough to be bathed on the kitchen counter

Sara and her family at her First Communion

Leave us a comment and describe your mother to us.  


Catch up with Sara and her writings on her new blog, Crow River Writer.