It’s International Mother’s Day on the 14th of May and having been a mother for a whole 27 years, the following are some of the things I have garnered over the years.
1.There is nothing like a perfect mother. I remain perplexed at how my children have misread certain situations that I thought was clear proof of the purity of my motives. No matter how hard we try, we will make mistakes, misunderstand our children and hurt them. Words said unconsciously or in jest, will long be remembered after we have forgotten we ever uttered them. Let’s remember that we are human and that even God had children that didn’t turn out right. The most important thing is to have the right motives and do the best we can at every opportunity we get. Interestingly, when our children understand that we have flaws, that we don’t know it all, it makes us more human and relatable and encourages them to open up to us about the going-ons in their lives.
2.Your children will grow up. Savour every moment, create memories, enjoy every experience instead of moaning about the terrible twos, their being clinging, the heady teenage years. Soon and very soon, they will grow up, become independent, leave home and you will wish that you were once more that major force in their lives whose words, opinions, beliefs were sacrosanct.
3.You have a different life from your children. It’s often the case that when women have children, their names change, people begin to call them by their first child’s name and not their names and this tradition helps to reinforce the belief that women’s identities are tied to their children. The sad truth we gradually realise as our children grow, is that whilst we make our children the centre of our lives even undergoing a name change for them, we are not the centre of their lives. As they grow, they begin to demand independence from us, entertaining different ideas, cultures, circles and interests. Remember that although you may live for them initially you can’t afford to live life for them and through them. As they grow and mature, their paths become different from yours. Learn to live with it.
4.Your children will stain your white. They will make choices and have lifestyles that you do not agree with. They will imbibe cultures, tastes, likes and dislikes that will be strange to you. It really has nothing to do with you. Don’t take it too personally especially when it concerns religious beliefs, give them the freedom to be themselves and to find the truth for themselves. They mostly will grow out of the phase that they are in and how you handle the situation will determine how fast they will outgrow or get bored with those rebellious phrases.
5.No one can take your place. Not their father, grandparents, teacher, friend or spouse. I found the video where a mother in law and daughter in law were fighting over who would sit in the front seat of the car very ludicrous. No one can dispute a mother’s efforts and sacrifices in bringing up her children but there are boundaries especially when they marry. Learn to respect those boundaries. Be secure in your space.
6.We don’t always act from a place of love. Sometimes we may think we are acting in our children’s best interests but we are really safeguarding our own interests. I remember clearly a mother who always had the need to be wanted , she made her children very dependent on her so that they couldn’t take major decisions without her input. From the outside it seems they honour her, but from the inside she has stunted their development and growth that they can’t function independently from her thereby feeding her need to be wanted. We must scrutinise our feelings and choices for our children objectively because many times consciously and unconsciously, we use them as a cover for our own inadequacies.
7.Your children are not your therapist especially when they are minors. They don’t need to know details of your quarrels with their father, relatives or friends unless you need to put them out of harm’s way. It is not fair to them as you rob them of their childhood by exposing them too soon and it does nothing for you aside from enlisting them in your private army. Trust me, when they grow and are matured they will apportion blame adequately between you and your enemies.
8.The work /Life balance doesn’t really exist . We can’t have it all at the same time. At some point in time one thing will suffer at the cost of the other. The main thing is to make sure we prioritise the important things and outsource the things we can.
9. We may not want to admit it but there will be days and seasons that we will question whether we made the right choices to be a mother, when loving doesn’t come naturally, when our children betray us, when we look at our children and wonder if albeit fleetingly what our world would have looked like without them in it. The truth is that a lot of us will feel this way at some point in our journey as mothers, it doesn’t mean we don’t love our children, are not grateful for the gift of them or appreciate the joys they have brought into our lives. It just means that they and we are only human after all. Acknowledge the feelings, they are just emotions and they will pass.
10. Love yourself first . Those plane security messages that tell us to put an oxygen mask over our heads before that of another in the case of a mishap are true of motherhood. We all have voices in our heads telling us we are selfish to seek our own happiness especially when our children are younger, when we are in a bad marriage, when our desires conflict with our duties as mothers. It is difficult but we must give ourselves the permission to live and not just exist. We may have to push our desires and needs to the back and take up the burdens of others and there is nothing wrong in that but when does life really begin for us, is it after work, when the children grow up, when we finish paying school fees , become grandparents, the country becomes better?. The bitter truth is that if we die today, our children’s lives may halt a bit but will not come to an end. They will mourn us but live on. We can be conscientious mothers and still live life to the full.
The poet, Audre Lorde once described motherhood as the “suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness.” I think he is right. Motherhood is such a big responsibility that changes women sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.
HAPPY MOTHERS DAY AGAIN.