Hahn began working on A Mother Is a Story when she was pregnant with her second child, Vivian, continuing with her project through pregnancy, birth and the first year of her daughter’s life. The perfect time to dedicate herself to a project such as this. As she says, “motherhood presents a constant whirlwind of simultaneous, often conflicting emotions. We are deeply in love, deeply exhausted, exasperated and proud, worried and blissful-these feelings form their own special harmony in the music of motherhood.” This is what she hoped to capture in her book.
Nothing can really prepare you for the vast experience that is motherhood, but Hahn hopes that something within these pages, within the words or the illustrations, will strike a chord with you. That you will be able to recognise yourself, but also your children and your own mother, “and the love that passes between you”. That you will find solace, recognition and respect for your own journey as a mother.
A Mother Is a Story is published in conjunction with Stories for My Child: A Mother’s Memory Journal, a guided journal for capturing all the moments of motherhood, small and spectacular, from pregnancy through your child’s adolescence. Ideal for any baby showers or birthdays coming up for the loved ones in your life, or splash out and treat yourself, mama! You so deserve it.
