At the birth of her first child, a woman becomes a mother - something totally different from what she was just moments before. To me that statement says a lot.

Make yourself think back to when your child was born and the feeling that you had, the mix of fear, wonder, curiosity, devotion, pain and instantaneous love. All feelings we’ve had before but never quite as clear and profound as the moment your child is put into your arms for the first time. This small, delicate, dependent miracle is reliant upon you and your husband to teach him or her life’s many lessons.

Your own mother must have felt the same things when you were placed into her arms the first time. When she held your tiny little hands, listened to you cry, snuggled you close to her heart, kissed your sweet face, smelled your beautiful baby scent. There is no smell in the world - no expensive perfume or relaxing aromatherapy that can be as intoxicating as the smell of a fresh, new, innocent baby.

I remember when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, it did not seem real to me until I went to the doctor’s office and heard her heart beat for the first time. It was so rapid, so loud, so clear, as though God had bestowed upon me this incredible treasure. He, the Creator of us all - thought I was deserving of the responsibility of bringing a child into this world and raising her and promoting in her all the good that I know she will do.

When she was born and I finally got to hold her in my arms alone in my hospital room - I cried like I probably have never cried before. I now had someone I was and am responsible for. Looking into her eyes, I wondered what joy will her life have in store for her, what pain will she have to endure in her life, her first step, her first tummy ache, her first loose tooth, her first boyfriend, her first heartbreak, her first car, her first job, her marriage, her first baby.

I wondered, do I really have what it takes? As women, we are so lucky. Though the miracle of being able to create a child is bestowed upon both men and women, we are the ones who are able to see and feel the way our bodies change, there is a lifeline between mother and child from conception, though birth, throughout life that is like no other. We can almost feel telepathically when our child or children need us, when they are hurt we feel their pain literally, when they are sick we wish we could be the one’s who were sick or in pain for them.

This doesn’t stop when they leave home does it? My mother has always been there for me through everything - I am sure there are moments I have put her through when she would have wished that maternal connection could somehow not be as strong, not hurt as bad, but she was there for me none the less, even when I treated her as though I didn’t want her concern, her help, even her love. She kept on giving it, feeling it, enduring it along with me. I hope that I can return the honor of being her child, through being somewhere close to as good a mother to my daughter as Mom was and continues to be to me.

So often in the history of the world, there have been many groups of people who have suffered cruelty, ridicule and persecution. Most times because they were "different". From biblical times, Jews were persecuted most prominently by the nailing to the cross of Jesus. The most widely known persecution of an individual race of people was the Holocaust. You cannot read about nor watch a movie or documentary about this devastating period in history without being affected by it for days, weeks or longer.

After I watched Schindler’s List for the first time, I was depressed and had nightmares for weeks. In high school history class when first learning of Hitler and the atrocities he and his followers and supporters committed I was enthralled by the fact that so many people would "go along" with something so horrendous.

At first, Native Americans were essentially viewed as a wild and savage people. They were removed from their land and set up in Indian Reservations. They were the first "true" Americans.

African Americans were brought over from Africa on slave ships and sold for labor. How do you put a price on the life of a human being? They were beaten, raped, abused and treated as less than human. From watching documentaries and special presentations on the Discovery Channel, I have seen the way they were treated on their civil rights marches, the way they were beaten with police batons and sprayed with fire hoses in the streets of Birmingham, Alabama and other places in the United States "The Land of the Free".

Are we going to see another Holocaust in Kosovo? Genocide in 1999? I cannot claim to know what started the problems between the Serbians and the Albanians, but I cannot understand anything being a reason to force a nationality of people to leave their homeland. Can NATO bring peace and safety to the Albanian people? Will they ever be able to live unharmed and harmonious lives in Kosovo ever again if NATO is able to step in and bring about the demise of the regime present there now?

Since the beginning of time, someone, some race of humanity has been persecuted, treated as less than, stripped of their dignity and punished for being who they are, who God made them. Why is it that we cannot enjoy, learn from, appreciate and love the differences among us all. Must we always be looking for something to hate about someone else?

Inferiority

Feelings of inferiority can either crush and paralyze an individual or provide tremendous emotional energy which powers every kind of success and achievement.

I remember my high school years as being some of the worst of my life. Wanting to try out for cheerleading, wanting to be on the Debate Team because my World Geography teacher said "you would be an asset to the team". My feelings of inferiority to the "it" girls of my school, my town, caused me to decline the invite to the Debate Team, caused me to chicken out of cheerleader tryouts - because I was afraid of not being good enough to make it, afraid of being made fun of, being laughed at. Oh, how I wanted to be in the Thespians, to act in some of the great plays my high school put on. Didn’t do that either because of my own fears.

Those are some of my greatest regrets when looking back on my teenage years. I let other people’s opinions, the fear of what others would think or say about me, my own self doubts, keep me from being involved.

The sadder thing is that as adults we often do that too. We think we aren’t pretty enough, skinny enough, talented enough, smart enough. Who’s standard are we trying to live up to? Just because others may not recognize those traits in us shouldn’t matter, but do we recognize those gifts in ourselves? I am, at 25 years of age, finally beginning to discover in myself that I am good enough and capable of doing anything I set out to accomplish.

How often do you get up in the morning and catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror - stepping out of the shower and find you are disappointed with the reflection you see? I know I do. I catch myself making derogatory remarks about myself and my body quite often. But why? We can’t keep blaming it on the magazines and the women on television. God created us each individually, different sizes, different shapes, unique physical features that make us all beautiful in some way. Being carbon copies of someone else wouldn’t be any fun at all.

When my husband and I went to Cozumel for our honeymoon, I had purchased a black bikini, perfect I thought, to hold everything in place and cover the caboose. I had lost around 12 pounds before the wedding and had what I considered a tan for someone as pale complexioned as myself. Boy, I thought I was the cat’s meow. You notice you’re never as hard on yourself when you, alone, are looking in the mirror, but get out on the beach in the bright glare of the sun with a lot of women (some having never had a child), and you slowly or quickly in my case, start thinking what the hell was I thinking back at home, looking that mirror in the dark bedroom? I thought I looked "hot".

Well laying on that beach with my new hubby beside me, I started sucking in the gut, holding my head at an uptilted angle (to hide the double chins), sticking my chest out as far as I could and tossing the sunscreen away. You know what this accomplished? I looked more foolish like that (not to mention that bright red lobster glow from going without the sunscreen) than I did just relaxing and saying to hell with it, I still look pretty darn good for a woman who has a child. Heck, I look good no matter what.

Have you ever seen a woman who was not particularly attractive, not real trim, but she walks like she owns her body and loves it the way it is? She gets noticed and you start thinking how pretty she is. It is all in the karma she puts out. She believes in herself, she is proud of who she is and what she’s got. Perhaps she’s doing a good job of faking it, but that’s usually how is starts out anyway. Eventually you begin to really take pride in yourself.