YEA!!!!!!!

This provocative photo illustration was deemed the best magazine cover of the year.

It is an image and story that stands out: a naked woman of an undetermined age — with gray hair and wrinkles — covering her breast and cradling her pregnant belly. “Is She Just Too Old For This?” — an article looking at the social and scientific issues around parents having children past their 40s and 50s — appeared in the October 3, 2011 issue of New York Magazine and then went viral, internationally.

The American Society of Magazine Editors took notice, naming it the Cover of the Year in its 2012 Best Cover Contest. ASME gave its reasoning for the win in a press release:

The editors deliberately chose a model representing the story at its most extreme and photographed her in the pose made iconic by Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair. Her belly was plumped with a prosthetic pillow, then carefully retouched to look real. The over-the-top poster-like cover was meant to stop consumers in their tracks — and it did.

The article was just as engaging. Read the New York Magazine cover story that won the 2012 ASME Best Cover Contest here.

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Be Yourself

by Rachel Snyder

The journey of mothering is like no other

and it’s all too easy to get lost in it.

Right now, set a conscious intention

to carry every bit of who you are into your role as a mother.

Promise yourself that you will embrace your shortcomings and your missteps

and will never beat yourself up for doing the very best you can.

Once you settle into being your authentic self,

you cannot help but become a one-of-a-kind, original, remarkable mom.

Don’t compare yourself with any other mother you know,

including your own.

Your genuine mothering path will have a feel and flavor and tone

that are yours and yours alone

and it just may open you up in new and unexpected ways.

You may be happy and sad – all in the same day.

You may find yourself more creative, more expressive, more loving.

Other times you might feel angry and sometimes, yes,

you may very well be afraid.

Take these opportunities to know yourself more deeply.

Consider what feels right for you

as well as for your child.

To revel in being a mother,

you must first celebrate the unique and beautiful individual

that you are and always have been.

http://www.rachelsnyder.wordpress.com

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Roadtrip (The Journey of a Mother-of-the-Bride)

by Valerie Gillies

“The life of a mother is the life of a child:  you are two blossoms on a single branch” – Karen Maezen Miller, Momma Zen:  Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood

I’m heading out on a road trip tomorrow—a real, week-long one that will take me halfway across this country.  Never have done anything like this before.  But there’s the matter of this dress, and this young woman who needs to get her car to Houston, and her compulsive mom who has an obsession with putting things in order before she lets go of them.  This is hard stuff, much more difficult than I could have imagined, yet somehow exhilarating.  Like jumping of a cliff. […]

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Found In…

Researchers have shed light on the possible links between maternal age and autism. While much research has been done to identify potential genetic causes of autism, the new study led by Sven Sandin, of the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and King`s College, London, suggests that non-heritable and environmental factors may also play a role in children`s risk for autism. Read more at: http://zeenews.india.com/news/health/diseases/higher-maternal-age-may-predict-kids-autism-risk_16724.html.

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Just Being A Mother

by Cyma Shapiro

Dear Reader: This is another reprint of a previously posted essay. Nearly every year I read or rerun it, simply to get perspective on my life. During this month of Mother’s Day, I hope it provides something for you, too!

When I began my first midlife mother’s project – the art gallery show NURTURE: Stories of New Midlife Mothers –  and then began writing about related topics, I was grappling with my truths: about coming into motherhood at a much later age; about my impending middle age; about the “Change of Life” and all that it brings; and about reinventing oneself and all that it means, especially once I’d gone past the century mark (sssshhhhh). […]

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Mother’s Day (Revisited II)

by Cyma Shapiro

I wrote this blog post a few years ago for MotherhoodLater, and reprinted it last year. This year, I’ve decided to run it again. In fact, I may make this an annual occasion.  I’ve also decided to reprint the older photo of my stepson’s first real Mother’s Day present to me – flowers – as a backdrop for this – a reminder of how being a mother to my four children (in two generations) has truly made me happy and proud.

It’s amazing how one year can change things;  how motherhood makes us forget what happened when our children were younger or youngest; how they came into our lives and what changes we needed to make once they were here.  I can honestly say that I am nearly fully comfortable in my Motherhood-clothes, a role that I played well in the beginning, but one that I now don each day with ease in the same way that I donned singlehood for many, many years. I won’t say that there aren’t days I wish I could wake up, yawn, and go down for coffee all on my own time, my own rhythm. I will say, however, that I’m the happiest that I’ve ever been – now that I have children. […]

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I Will Honor Her (In Honor of My Daughter’s Birth Mother)

by Jane D. Samuel

“Can you imagine that someone just threw her away?”

Seven years later, these words are still as sharp and wrong as the day they were innocently uttered. Carrying our youngest daughter into church that day, I did not turn around to see who said them. It did not matter.

Though I have been known to set a few folks straight about China’s one-child policy and its subsequent boom in international adoption, this time I chose to let it pass. It was Easter Vigil and our daughter’s day – she was being marked by baptism as Christ’s own forever. And she was ours forever. […]

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