On an episode of Unlocking Us, Brene Brown said, “I was raised by a mother who was taught ‘If you’re not suffering, you’re not loving; if you’re not a martyr, you’re not a mother.’ This taught us that love is about abandoning yourself, making yourself disappear.” I stopped in my tracks immediately.
My mother turns 60 this month. My siblings and I have been racking our brains to find ways to show her how important she is - but every idea feels like it isn’t enough. Being a child of immigrants brings with it an intense sense of guilt - the knowing that our lives are so much easier than what our parents went through. This story is not unique to our family, but the feeling is heightened when a pandemic robs us of the ability to “sufficiently” celebrate the woman who gave us life.
Ma had a particularly rough childhood. She’s the oldest of four, and at age 5, was shipped from Africa (her birthplace) to live in India with a strict uncle. In this pre-phone era, my mother was isolated from the only support system she ever had - with no idea why, or how long it was for. At age 22, she married my father - one of the best men I know, but still victim to the patriarchal narrative of having a wife who would cook, clean, and take care of both his children and his parents.
I grew up watching my mother fall on her sword, time and again. When the fighting got bad, the demands got high, the misery so deep it ran from her eyes - she stayed in her place, “for the sake of the children.” My mother was never taught how to dream, how to push, how to expand the limitations she was born into. She spent her life waiting for permission that never came, without once being asked - “What do you want?”
This story, again, is not unique to our family - and that’s the heartbreak of it all. As we listen to stories of white women shunning their mothers’ models to ~find themselves~, the very idea produces an intense sense of guilt. How can we rightfully step into our power, while fighting the sense of betrayal towards our collective mothers’ struggles? How dare we choose to free ourselves, when they never had choices to begin with?
Then Glennon said something and I threw my pen to paper, so that I would never forget it. “The best way to honor our parents is to trust the women they raised - ourselves.”
My mother did the best that she could with the tools that she had - and raised strong, independent, willful women. I imagine there is pain in seeing us chase the things she couldn’t even see - but there is pride there, too. Of knowing that she succeeded in giving us what she never had. That her struggle, “for the sake of the children,” was not for nothing. And while I don’t want this disappearing act to become a pattern for generations that follow, I do want to honor those that came before us. We wouldn’t be the women we are, the women we can still become, were it not for their perseverance.
So I promise to live boldly, even when it hurts. Because staying small, staying caged will not be your legacy.
And when COVID is all said and done - we’re getting on the first plane to Africa, like we had always planned to.
Here’s to you, Ma. Here’s to us.
PS - This post was written in 2021. In 2023 - we finally did it. Here she is, in all of her glory and joy, in the place she once called home.
