"I don't understand why you want to write about the Susan Smith case. It's horrendous."

My husband seems almost annoyed as I start to talk once again about the 23 year old Union, South Carolina woman who drowned her two sons.

Perhaps it is because the crime IS so horrendous to me that I want to write about it. A lot of people have written a great deal about Susan Smith, including her ex-husband, whose book, Beyond Reason, hit shelves in Union, his hometown, earlier this week. The early release of David Smith's 'tell all' book came one day after his heartbreaking testimony in Smith's sentencing phase of the trial.

Susan Smith says she wants to die. I believe her. I believe that in every mother there is the awareness that to go on living every day with the full blown reality of such an act, would be too much to bear.

For awhile, I was angry that her suicide attempts were thwarted. Why not let her have dignity, her life for her childrens', by her own hand? Must she suffer a life time for an act she can never change? Haven't enough people suffered already?

Truly, a whole nation has suffered. We have been witness to an unthinkable act. We have asked ourselves, "How could a mother do that to her children?" We have looked for any reason that could possibly redeem Susan Smith. But any reason, short of life or death, doesn't seem good enough. And even if the evidence showed that to be the case, is it not a mother's instinct to protect her young to the death?

I am personally struck, as a mother, with the tragedy of Susan Smith's crime.

Since Smith confessed to letting her car roll into the John D. Long Lake, her two boys strapped into carseats inside, I have roller coasted emotionally in reaction. I can be both compassionate and condemning. I can see and feel her desperation, a victim herself of terrible sadness and abuse. A woman, who as the prosecution contends, was so needy for love, that she came to view her children as an impediment to her chance for being loved.

And I wonder somewhere in my darkest thoughts, is this something women learn in our culture? That life is not livable without love ? In condemnation, I experience a huge rush of protectivness and love for my own boys, and can't understand how Susan Smith could cover her ears to her children's cries. But the line gets fuzzy sometimes with what defines a "good mother."

In our world, there are mothers who kill their baby girls, because they are not valued. There are mothers fighting for their own survival who must watch their babies die. Mothers must, when asked by their governments, hand over their sons as sacrifical lambs to go to war. Mothers, for a variety of reasons, abort their unborn children. These actions, to a degree are excused, and even sanctioned in some cultures. But, in our world, we cannot sanction or excuse what Susan Smith did. In our world, a jury has decided that she must live with the horror of her crime "for the rest of her natural life." An odd word to apply to such a life.

And as a nation, as a people, we all have looked inside ourselves to see what price Susan Smith should pay for taking the lives of her children. And, although at one time I had thought she should be able to take her own life, if that is what she wished, I have changed my mind. I don't believe anyone will be able to heal, Susan Smith, most importantly, by her death.

Instead of looking inside ourselves for what price she should pay for her crime, I think we should, as a people, look for a way to forgive Susan Smith, for reminding us of what a mother may be capable of doing. We should pray that she may be able someday, to forgive herself.

I asked my two boys, what they think should happen to Susan Smith. My youngest child at first, said death. But then thought, and decided she would suffer more, if she lived. My oldest child's immediate response was that he hated for anyone to suffer, she shouldn't get the death sentence, even though she had done a terrible thing.

I wonder, if we could hear from her children, Alex and Michael, what they would want for their mother. And I wonder how we all will live with the knowledge of what Susan Smith did, how the unthinkable thing for a mother to do, is indeed within the realm of motherhood.