Good mothering expands to caring for all life’s beings as kin

Evidence

So it is my grandchildren who will swim in this pond, and others whom the years will bring. The circle of care grows larger and caregiving for my little pond spills over to caregiving for other waters. The outlet from my pond runs downhill to my good neighbor’s pond. What I do here matters. Everybody lives downstream. My pond drains to the brook, to the creek, to a great and needful lake. The water net connects us all. I have shed tears into that flow when I thought that motherhood would end. But the pond has shown me that being a good mother doesn’t end with creating a home where just my children can flourish. A good mother grows into a richly eutrophic old woman, knowing that her work doesn’t end until she creates a home where all of life’s beings can flourish. There are grandchildren to nurture, and frog children, nestlings, goslings, seedlings, and spores, and I still want to be a good mother. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 329

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off chapter 13’s extension of kinship grammar to the whole living world — the water net as kin-network metaphor across the polyad. — connects to: Human household care extends naturally to plants, animals, and machines alike — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 334; Trust extends kin-group loyalty outward to the whole society
• SEED: Essay angle: everybody lives downstream — how the watershed makes private stewardship unavoidably collective, an argument for expanding the circle of care.
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the water/stewardship theme; ‘everybody lives downstream’ is a bridge to environmental-justice framings in Eco-Justice Education.

Broader Connections

• Human household care extends naturally to plants, animals, and machines alike #expands (0.80) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 334
• Trust extends kin-group loyalty outward to the whole society #expands (0.75)