The close reexperiencing of childhood's passions and miseries, the identification with powerlessness, the apprehension of the uses of power, flow inevitably from a close relationship with a son or daughter. Perhaps most shaking, the instinct to protect becomes overwhelming. A writer's sympathies, like forced blooms, enlarge in the hothouse of an infant's need. The ability to look at social reality with an unflinching mother's eye, while at the same time guarding a helpless life, gives the best of women's work a savage coherence. ...

Sigrid Undset's extraordinary Kristin Lavransdatter, a woman whose life is shaped by powerful acts of love, commits sins unthinkable for her time and yet manages to protect her children. "Milk brain," a friend calls these maternal deep affections that prime the intellect. Milk wisdom. Milk visions. I exist, I simply breathe.
—Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year, Harpercollins, April 1, 1995