Nuttall Family: Celebrating Womenhood

5/8/11

A women celebrates womanhood in many ways. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, she may "rock a sobbing child without wondering if today's world is passing her by, because she knows she holds tomorrow tightly in her arms."

She may watch her toddler look longingly at the stairs he doesn't yet know how to climb. When he looks back eagerly for approval, her answer must be "no," though the little one bursts into tears. She is a teacher of tough love who understands the role of discipline in nurturing her children.

She is a Primary teacher who tastes the magic of childhood when she greets a proud seven-year-old, wearer of a CTR ring, who thrusts his fist forward and exclaims with happy courage, "See this CTR ring? It throws out an invisible shield of protection all around me, and no evil can break through!"

She is educated and able, preparing for her day of marriage that has not come, fully engaged in a professional world that needs the talents and training she offers. Added to these gifts, her caring touch can soothe and heal, for "Charity Never Faileth, " even in the corporate business world.

She watches as her teenage daughter is not asked to prom, which brings back her own memories of not having been asked. Her heart aches, but she tells her daughter, "My dear, not everyone in the world needs to fall in love with you. It only takes one."

She works patiently as a volunteer committed to nurturing the homeless; she cares lovingly for ten years for an invalid mother-in-law; she accepted the confidence shown by friends and neighbors to run for the state legislature. "Look what you did for our school through the PTA," they say. "We need you."

She watches her son kneel across the alter from his bride in a temple sealing room and thinks of her own marriage in such a room, celebrating the sealing of eternal love.

She enters a hospital room where her first daughter-in-law gingerly sits up and, holding up her own first baby, greets her: "Isn't she beautiful? Would you like to hold her - Grandma?"

She rejoices in the seasons of a woman's life, for each time and each season is worth its own celebration. Spread over a lifetime, celebrating womanhood is a celebration of life.

- Celebrating Womanhood

Marie K. Hafen (previous member of Young Women general board)

Ensign, June, 1992

I am so blessed to have and have had SO many wonderful women in my life

from

neighbors, ward members, primary leaders, school teachers, young women leaders, life long friends, co-workers, grandmas, cousins, sisters, moms and anyone else I may be forgetting at this moment!

None of us would be where we are today without all of the amazing women who have influenced us for good to help us get here.

Today in Relief Society instead of celebrating

Motherhood

we celebrated

Womenhood.

"Are we not all mothers"? We all have been blessed with the traits of motherhood

(love, understanding, compassion, comfort, etc.)

whether we have our own children or not.

There were 7 women who were asked to pick a favorite quote about motherhood/womenhood.

They each took a few minutes to share their quote and their feelings about it.

One of the quotes shared was by Margaret D. Nadauld

from the October 2000 General Conference