A Mother’s Role as Story Keeper

A Mother’s Role as Story Keeper | A Reflection

There are stories a mother tells out loud, 
about moss and moonlight,
about the way wind slips between branches,
about how a child belongs to the living world
simply by being here.

And then there are the stories she keeps.

The ones that do not ask to be spoken,
only held.

Small, quiet moments
that settle somewhere between breath and bone:
the way her child pauses to feel the warmth of a stone,
the hush that comes over them when the forest bends close,
the soft flicker of recognition
when something ancient in them wakes.

A mother notices these things.
She gathers them without trying.
She becomes the keeper of the small luminous threads
the child does not yet know they are weaving.

The stories she keeps are not all hers

Some were handed to her long before she could understand them.
Some rose from the land she’s walked,
the jungles that taught her to listen,
the mountains that taught her to breathe slower,
the rivers that taught her to soften.

Some arrived when she held her child for the first time
and felt the unmistakable sense
of an old connection returning
in a new form.

Being a story keeper is not something she chooses.
It is something that chooses her.

How a mother carries stories

She carries them in the way she watches her child
take in the world,
not from above,
but alongside.

She carries them in the questions she doesn’t answer right away,
letting wonder linger a little longer
in the space between them.

She carries them in the gentleness she protects
when the world becomes too loud.

She carries them by remembering
what her child has not learned to forget.

A mother’s stories are made of moments,
presence,
breath.

One day the child will ask

Not always directly,
but in the subtle ways children reach
for the shape of who they are.

And she will know which story to offer.

Not all of them at once,
as not every thread she has kept.
Only the one that meets the child
where they are standing,
with their hands open
and their heart listening.

The rest she continues to hold
until the moment is right.

This is what it means to be a story keeper.

The quiet truth beneath it all

A mother remembers,
so her child can learn
to remember themselves.

The stories she holds
are wayfinding markers, lanterns.

Carried lightly,
patiently,
like something that understands
its purpose is not to guide every step,
only to shine
when the path grows dim.

A mother’s role as story keeper
is not to shape the child into who they should become,
but to recognise
who they already are
and help them grow in that direction.

Softly.
Steadily.
In their own rhythm.

 

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