Motherhood
Shireen is especially well known as the mother of Merwan Irani, who was her second child and was later named Meher Baba. When Merwan was 19 he began to have mystical experiences after a short contact with a Muslim master Hazrat Babajan. Shireen did everything to cure his "illness" and even after Meher Baba began to be more stabilized, she urged him to give up the ascetic life he had begun like his father and to get a career and be married. Meher Baba of course never did and this conflict caused grief for both of them. However, eventually Shireen came to believe that her son was a true spiritual master and was resigned to his choice when she died.
In all Sheriar and Shireen had nine children, seven sons and two daughters: Jamshed, Merwan (Meher Baba), Freini, Jal, Shirmund, Jehangir, Behram, Ardeshir (Adi), and Mani Irani. Of these, three died in childhood: one son Shirmund at seven months, another son Jehangir at two years, and a daughter named Freiny, who died of the plague as a small child in 1902.
Read more about this topic: Shireen Sheriar Irani
Famous quotes containing the word motherhood:
“Let’s just call what happened in the eighties the reclamation of motherhood . . . by women I knew and loved, hard-driving women with major careers who were after not just babies per se or motherhood per se, but after a reconciliation with their memories of their own mothers. So having a baby wasn’t just having a baby. It became a major healing.”
—Anne Taylor Fleming (20th century)
“What stunned me was the regular assertion that feminists were “anti-family.” . . . It was motherhood that got me into the movement in the first place. I became an activist after recognizing how excruciatingly personal the political was to me and my sons. It was the women’s movement that put self-esteem back into “just a housewife,” rescuing our intelligence from the junk pile of “instinct” and making it human, deliberate, powerful.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Work is a responsibility most adults assume, a burden at times, a complication, but also a challenge that, like children, requires enormous energy and that holds the potential for qualitative, as well as quantitative, rewards. Isn’t this the only constructive perspective for women who have no choice but to work? And isn’t it a more healthy attitude for women writhing with guilt because they choose to compound the challenges of motherhood with work they enjoy?”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)