Don't wish me happiness I don't expect to be happy all the time... It's gotton beyond that somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor… - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Except for the child, woman’s creation is so often invisible, especially today. We are working at an arrangement in form, of the myriad disparate details of housework, family routine and social life. It is a kind of intricate game of cat’s-cradle we manipulate on our fingers, with invisible threads. How can one point to this constant tangle of household chores, errands and fragments of human relationships, as a creation? It is hard even to think of it as purposeful activity, so much of it is automatic.

For to be a woman is to have interests and duties, raying out in all directions from the central mother-core, like spokes from the hub of a wheel. The pattern of our lives is essentially circular. We must be open to all points of the compass; husband, children, friends, home, community; stretched out, exposed, sensitive like a spider’s web to each breeze that blows, to each call that comes. How difficult for us, then, to achieve a balance in the midst of these contradictory tensions, and yet how necessary for the proper functioning of our lives.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.