While visiting my in-laws over Easter weekend, my mother-in-law gifted our kids a lovely copy of The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. As a retired first grade teacher, she has excellent taste in books, and this was another hit.

I know I read (or was read) the story as a child. And we all see that little speech by the Skin Horse about how a toy becomes Real get quoted from time to time. But I have to admit, I didn’t remember how the book ended.

If it’s also been a decade or two or three since you last read it, here’s a quick summary of the end:

The stuffed rabbit, who has been toted about and slept with and had his whiskers loved off, ends up in a garbage heap with other toys and books that must be burned as the boy recovers from scarlet fever. The rabbit thinks to himself:

Of what use was it to be loved and lose one’s beauty and become Real if it all ended like this? And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby velvet nose and fell to the ground.

From the tear, a flower grows, and out of the flower appears a fairy—the nursery magic fairy who makes toys real. Really Real.

“Wasn’t I Real before?” asked the little Rabbit.

“You were Real to the Boy,” the Fairy said, “because he loved you. Now you shall be Real to every one.”

The fairy then spirits the little rabbit away into the forest, where she turns him into a real rabbit, and he lives out his days frolicking with the other real rabbits.

The theme of the story that I had remembered from childhood is that loving and being loved—opening ourselves up to that vulnerability—is what makes us Real.

But while love was enough for the rabbit to be Real to the Boy, real Realness didn’t come until later.

I’m sure there are all kinds of ways to read this book. But as a mother who has been in the baby and toddler trenches for nearly eight years, I couldn’t help but see it through the lens of motherhood.

Love is the thing that prepares the little rabbit for Realness, it’s true. But his final transformation comes after loving and being loved. By the time the fairy appears, the rabbit has loved, but he has also frolicked, and suffered, and yearned, and grieved, and felt boredom, and fear, and loss, and otherwise Been Through It, and come out the other side. And now he is ready to truly Live.

Love alone doesn’t make us real. What makes us real is the showing up, the being present for life in all its states. When we allow ourselves to be stretched and worn through by life itself, we’re most ready to truly live the life we were meant for.

It’s a solitary tear that finally brings the fairy forth. And the rabbit sheds the tear for himself as much as he does for the boy.

Of what use was it to be loved and lose one’s beauty and become Real if it all ended like this?

The grief over losing one’s beauty is something I think every mother knows, even if motherhood itself is worth the loss. Matrescence, the process of becoming a mother and all its various impacts on women’s brains and bodies, is a term that’s gaining traction among people who talk about motherhood. But all mothers, and really all parents, can tell you that that phase of life is a complete deconstruction of everything: your body, your mind, your day-to-day, your sleep, your furniture. All of it.

My oldest is nearly eight, but with the youngest still in the toddler stage, only within the last few months have I felt that I’m beginning to find myself again—to realize and rediscover who I am within and beyond “Mom.” Having children was a transformation. But finding myself again after having children feels like a realization.

Because as I return to old hobbies and passion projects, I bring a new version of myself that I never could have known if I hadn’t had my whiskers loved off.

Wasn’t I real before?

Yes, of course. But now, maybe, I can be real to everyone.