The Art of Motherhood...

 Artist Mary Cassatt is well-known for painting scenes from the lives of women and portraying the intimate bond between mother and child. Her painting The Caress is on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Though Cassatt did not have any of her own children, her paintings depict the emotional and tender love that mothers feel for their sons and daughters.

This is another one of my favorite paintings of all time, and I think, as a mother, it is especially affecting and realistic...The curve of the child leaning back into the mother and the nakedness (and freedom of running around like that), is  a common occurrence among little ones, and it gives me the warm fuzzies, just looking at it.

And this letter (below), that is from Ruthie Sommers mother, as a gift for mother's day, is super inspiring...Any child that has just some of these traits instilled in them, would have a quality of life that is hard to come by. In her post, on the Tory Burch blog, she says the most important thing her mother instilled in her was the motto of, "ideas...not people or things." That is my favorite part of this letter, and valuable advice.

To all of the mother's out there, (clink, clink), who think about their children's happiness and internal value system, as their biggest asset, not fame, fortune, or external forces...

(The letter was first seen on the fab Simple Lovely blog)