Was it the act of giving ...

Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deeds, on the one hand, I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman who\'d sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, who\'d cried with me over boyfriends, who\'d clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother? Both, I realized. Being a parent wasn\'t just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.
Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deeds, on the one hand, I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman who'd sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, who'd cried with me over boyfriends, who'd clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother? Both, I realized. Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.
 Jodi Picoult

Quotes from the same author

My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.
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 Jodi Picoult
The best place to cry is on a mother's arms.
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 Jodi Picoult
I think this is every mother's worst nightmare - something dreadful happening to her child.
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 Jodi Picoult
That's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one
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 Jodi Picoult
Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was... ...Parents aren't the people you come from. They're the people you want to be, when you grow up. I sat between my mother and my father, watching strangers on TV carry in Shaker rockers and dusty paintings and ancient beer tankards and cranberry glass dishes; people and their hidden treasures, who had to be told by experts that they'd taken something incredibly precious for granted.
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 Jodi Picoult