Growing together

I want to tell you a story…about my mommy.

That’s what I call her, even ‘til this day in my conversations about her. I’ve been thinking about her a lot these days. Maybe because I’m growing older, as a woman and as a mom. Or maybe ‘cos I’m finally beginning to understand what being her was like, from a different perspective.

My mommy was a very gentle, tender and nurturing woman. She appreciated beautiful things – plants, art (whether fashion, music, movies or crafts), stories and people. When I was younger, living in a small island in East Malaysia, I remember watching her enjoy being creative, listening to music, gardening, hosting women bible study groups, singing hymns, and babysitting the little ones for families in our small church community. I remember those were the happier days, for her, and for us. Her life was very simple, fulfilling, and it was enough for her.

And then everything was taken away from her. I don’t think she was ever the same again after that. She survived for another 19 years, but she wasn’t truly living her life, beyond being our mother.

My mommy may have been a simple woman, but she was also a very resilient one. She lost her mother when she was a teenager and took over the role to care for her father and her 3 siblings. She became a mom without her mother by her side, raising 3 daughters mostly on her own, in whatever ways she knew how.

It took me a long time to appreciate what a strong woman she truly was. I was too self-absorbed in my own world and problems to see it then. What I saw was a stay-at-home-mom who didn’t pursue a dream of her own, who revolved her life around her children, and had nothing to look forward to when her children grew up and wanted to live their own lives.

Watching my mommy, I learned that I didn’t want to be responsible for the life of another. I didn’t want to have to sacrifice my freedom and my dreams. I didn’t want to live to care for others, like she did. So, for most of my adult life I didn’t want to be a mother. As life would have it, years later, when I thought it wouldn’t happen, I did. I became a mom without my mom by my side.

There is something about becoming a mother without your own to hold and guide you. There is a void inside you that no one can fully understand, unless they’ve experienced it themselves. And I am doing everything I possibly can so that my daughter wouldn’t have to experience the same, if and when she becomes one.

Having gone through my own growth since becoming a mom, I see now how my mommy devoted her life to raise us so that we could live a different life than she did, so that we could do what she couldn’t then, what her mother couldn’t before her. Everything I am today I owe it to the sacrifices she made and the resilience that she had instilled in me.

But if I had a choice, I wished that it didn’t have to be that way. I wished that my mommy had

the resources to support herself in the ways she needed,

the capacity to care, to love and to live not just for us, but for herself,

the freedom to chase her dreams, do what she loves, and live for herself too,

the chance to learn that taking care of herself is also a big part of being a mother, even if it makes her feel guilty, and

a community where she could be just herself, not confined by cultural expectations and her roles in it.

Maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe how I experienced her and our relationship would have been different. Maybe she would still be with us today. I will never know.

But this much I do know. That all those things I wished for her is what I want for myself now. What I want my daughter to have. And what I hope for every mama out there to find for themselves.

Wanting the support of a village isn’t just an empty saying for me, because I saw how losing her community left my mom feeling so lonely. Just like it did for me when I moved here 10 years ago. And wanting to support mamas in finding themselves means so much to me because I saw how living life just for us left my mom feeling so empty after we grew up. And I knew how easy it is to lose ourselves entirely in our roles, just as I did in the first 5 years of motherhood.

This is why supporting mamas is such a big part of who I am and what I do. Not just because I am one, or because I’ve experienced the effects my postpartum depression had on my health. But most of all, it’s because I wish for mamas out there to know that they can ask for more for themselves. Just like I wished my mommy did.

If this post resonates with you, reach out to me or someone you can trust to ask for support. Because motherhood isn’t meant to be experienced alone.

#MaternalMHmatters