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Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Excerpts first appeared in: CatholicVote.org: “Can We Have It All? Is the Wrong Question,” September 23, 2013; Catholic World Report: “A Brief History of Same-Sex Marriage and Why Catholics Are Losing the War Against It,” February 13, 2014; “Motherhood: The Ultimate Makeover,” November 11, 2014.

From my experience as a mother, grandmother, and founder of Project Rachel, I have spent most of my adult life thinking about what it means to be a mother and the unique gift it is from God. There is nothing fiercer and more beautiful than the love a mother has for her child.

The women I have encountered who have experienced a pregnancy loss have been a stirring testament to just how profoundly the reality of biological motherhood is imprinted in our bodies. These women never met their children, and yet they mourn them, miss them, and suffer from loss no matter the circumstances. These women, rather than simply going along with their lives as they were before the healing process, often become the most outspoken voices for life and the gift of motherhood.

To engage in motherhood today is a radical choice, a choice not held in esteem by many. The fruits of motherhood, however, are powerful. I have seen again and again that motherhood moves us beyond ourselves. Each child teaches us something new about ourselves and helps us to grow from self-centered young women into wise and loving mothers. Many women I have spoken with are surprised by the virtues that have been honed through mothering, such as humility, courage, temperance, compassion, self-sacrifice, generosity, meekness, and patience. It is easy to miss these interior treasures in the day-to-day chaos.

Ultimate Makeover is an outside-the-box view of motherhood that offers a new perspective for not merely surviving but thriving as a mother today. It examines both the challenges of motherhood and the many hidden rewards it offers by looking at the vices and virtues that come naturally to women. The book looks carefully at how the vocation of motherhood is so much more than a job; it is rather a unique calling from God to go outside one’s self. Both biological and spiritual motherhood call us to reach beyond ourselves to connect with and affirm others spiritually, psychologically, and humanly.

My own definition of motherhood is “women who are the practical responders to any situation.” It is not limited to biological motherhood, but to any woman who is able to see the needs of others and respond in a way that is helpful, healing, affirming, and life-giving.

Mothers are an antidote to the spread of a certain self-centeredness, a decline in openness, generosity and concern for others. In this sense, motherhood is more than childbearing: it is a life choice, entailing sacrifice, respect for life, and commitment to passing on those human and religious values which are essential for a healthy society. A society without mothers would be an inhuman society, because mothers are always able to witness, even in the worst moments, tenderness, dedication, moral strength.²

Motherhood is a special call from God to imitate Mary and her yes—her fiat—to love even when it hurts. It is not always wine and roses—far from it—but something more wonderful and important. Motherhood is the essential thread that weaves together the very fabric of our society.

The soul of a woman must therefore be expansive and open to all human beings;

it must be quiet so that no small flame will be extinguished by storm winds;

warm so as not to benumb fragile buds;

clear, so that no vermin will settle in dark corners and recesses;

self-contained, so that no invasions from without can imperil the inner life;

empty of itself and also of its body, so that the entire person is readily at the disposal of every call.³

The following pages offer an examination of motherhood that is realistic and honest; Carrie Gress does not skirt the challenges and the hard times. More than a survival guide, this book shows how motherhood really is the ultimate makeover, transforming mothers into wise and radiant women who provide untold value to their families and society as a whole.

—Vicki Thorn, founder of Project Rachel

Imagine you were offered a makeover that not only promised to make you more beautiful, but shaved off the rough edges of your personality and helped you gain control of your emotions, better manage your relationships, and grow in wisdom. And what if it could actually make you happy? Not waiting-for-happy. Not looking-in-all-the-wrong-places-happy. Not I’ve-given-up-on-happy. But truly, deeply happy—the kind of abiding happiness that isn’t shaken by changes in fortune, life challenges, death of loved ones, or illness. Sounds too good to be true, huh? And yet, this is the makeover every woman is handed with the gift of motherhood. Oh, yes, you also get a darling little bundle, but the real rewards are just waiting to be claimed. I know, it sounds like an empty sales pitch, but bear with me.

Motherhood is hard. There is no way around it. I didn’t realize just how hard until I started having my own children. It is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done—harder than learning four new languages, harder than writing a dissertation, harder than balancing full-time work and school. For a long time, however, I lived with the expectation that somehow being a mom was going to get easier. At every stage, I hoped that maybe next week I would get more sleep, that the endless messes would abate, or that the little battles through the mundane would subside.

A wise priest once told me that my daily struggles, such as being cut off in traffic, waiting in long lines, or dealing with incompetent customer service agents, were all part of God’s plan to make me holy. A few days later, when my husband did something irritating, I looked at him with a clenched jaw and said, “You are making me so holy right now,” which made both of us laugh. Somehow, however, I didn’t apply this priest’s wisdom to all the chaos and rough edges associated with parenting. Like most moms, I just wanted to get beyond them, rather than consider that maybe they were actually good for my soul and for our family in general.

And then the light finally went on. Being a mom is not going to get easier. The troubles and struggles may change, but various challenges will always remain. Why? Because the crosses associated with motherhood are a feature and not a flaw. Once I resigned myself to the reality that being a mom includes a healthy serving of struggle, a weight was lifted. Motherhood became almost easy once I accepted that it is hard. But the difficulty of motherhood is not in vain. This is an easy reality to forget when one is in the middle of what seems to be an endless slog. Motherhood, in fact, is the perfect antidote to the vices that come so readily to the fairer sex: vanity, impatience, pride, greed, unbridled emotions, over-controlling, and fickleness, to name a few. The daily struggles are God’s way of making us over in his own image and likeness. The pains and frustrations are his way of saying, “Uh, you really need to work on this…. Oh, and maybe we could just put that vice here, out of the way. Yes, uh-huh. In the trash…. And how about if we move a bit more of this pretty stuff in?” He is the one who has given us life, the gift of a husband, and the blessing of children—and not just for us to remain the same person we were when we got married, but to transform us into saints.

The baby industry rakes in roughly $23 billion a year. Expectant mothers spend huge amounts of money and time preparing to bring their newborns home. Precious little time and thought, however, go into preparing a woman’s soul for the most powerful, wonderful, natural, scary, overwhelming, and enduring experience of her life: motherhood. We may have all we need physically in preparation for baby’s arrival, but are we prepared spiritually? Nowadays, most women don’t give it much thought—one or two kids…how hard can it be? And yet from the earliest days of our education, most women are not exposed to the types of daily demands that a mother juggles. By and large we have been focused on some type of career outside the home, so when we find ourselves home with children we are bored, frustrated, overwhelmed, and ready to be “done.” And yet, if you asked women, “Would you have more children if it weren’t so hard?” most would say yes. I’ve encountered plenty of older women who say, “I wish I’d had more.” It is because it is hard that most people resist the idea of doing it more than once or twice. But it is the hard part that is the best-kept secret. Among the daily trials are hidden doorways to the kind of motherhood we aspire to: joyful, wise, ordered, dignified, loving, and a whole host of other good things.

Feminine vices, however, can only be transformed into virtues through challenges. It’s like building up muscles—no one expects to become a bodybuilder without lifting weights. Similarly, the virtues can’t be attained without resistance. Motherhood offers opportunities to replace our vices with virtues, remaking us into the person God intends us to be.

It is only in this spiritual training that we can begin to see our lives, our pains, our struggles as fruitful. It’s not just in the big things, like labor and childbirth, in which our pain has purpose and bears visible fruit—but in the everyday moments, like when you are so tired, you use your ATM pin to try to microwave soup. And yet, God in his great mercy has offered us this sanctification through the most gentle of ways: those little faces and grubby hands.

Today, Western women who live with unprecedented wealth, health, and opportunity don’t report being very happy. Despite the years of aggressive feminism promising the liberation of women through various government, social, and technical apparatuses, today, one in four women (29 percent) are on antidepressants, 11 percent are on antianxiety medication, eight million suffer from drug or alcohol addiction, and obesity rates have never been higher. In the thirst to find meaning and happiness, virtually no stone has been left unturned: New Age religions; yoga; divorce and non-traditional relationships (70 percent of divorces in the U.S. are initiated by women); fad diets; abortion (30 percent of females in the U.S. have had an abortion); and unprecedented personal debt all reflect the bottomless search. Even the dramatic rise in owning pets points to the unmet inner yearning created by feminism’s failed promises.

Men and women never had that much to do with each other over history! There was the world of men and the world of women. Now we’re working side-by-side in offices at the same job. Women want to leave at the end of the day and have a happy marriage at home, but then they put all this pressure on men because they expect them to be exactly like their female friends. If they feel restlessness or misery or malaise, they automatically blame it on men. Men are not doing enough; men aren’t sharing enough. But it’s not the fault of men that we have this crazy and rather neurotic system where women are now functioning like men in the workplace, with all its material rewards.⁵

This unhappiness underlines the old adage that “nature always wins.” Humans are hardwired to be unhappy when they live outside of God’s plan for their lives. Imagine expecting a dog to act like a cat—even chemically altering Fido to be more like Felix. The image of a bulldog strutting around like a finicky feline would not make us think, “Oh, how free!” Instead, it just seems odd. And yet this is the subtle indoctrination women have adopted with wild abandon over the decades under the banners of freedom, choice, and equality, with little to no resistance.

Women are finally beginning to take notice that feminism’s promises aren’t filling that void in our hearts. After generations of rejecting the lifestyles of our great-grandmothers, their wisdom is coming back around. Although more slowly in secular culture, a renaissance of sorts is happening among Christian women. Many have committed themselves to being open to having more children than the national average (just under two); often they are educating their children at home; they have a strong commitment to their faith and deep desire to do God’s will first, above all else. Surprisingly, many of these women have left the workforce, putting aside for a while high-paying jobs and careers as doctors, lawyers, corporate executives, and academics. These Christian women have found something much deeper to rely upon than trends and emotions: the will of God and the natural happy-making order he has set up on earth. At the heart of Christian motherhood is the clear understanding that God’s ways are not our ways and that our enduring happiness can only be found in his ways. Only in the mind of God can one find happiness and daily struggle simultaneously reaching toward the same goal.

The Catholic Church has a long history of liberating women, despite what current popular culture might tell us. It may seem ironic, but Christianity has been the most liberating force for women in all of human history. Scripture going back to the Book of Genesis affirms the equality and complementarity of men and women—both are necessary to get a full, although dim, understanding of the nature of God. And while Judaism did much to honor the dignity of women, polygamy was something still considered appropriate, so a full appreciation of womanhood never blossomed. Christ’s coming and his relationships with women changed the whole order of thinking about women. Rather than being viewed as second-class citizens, women were given their natural place of equality with men in sanctity and dignity (although of course there have been individuals who haven’t lived out this reality and who won’t in the future because of original sin). It is easy to look at the all-male priesthood and Church hierarchy and conclude that women have been mistreated by the Church. But the Church, in her wisdom, has said that men and women each have unique gifts—let’s honor those instead of trying to pretend differences don’t exist. Trying to turn women into men because men’s actions appear to be more valued is no way to honor women.