Emma’s Mothers
For someone who said she had no family growing up...Emma sure had a lot of parental figures that helped shape her way. At least in the maternal sense.
The obvious start is the woman who brought her life. The one we can argue is her real mother. Snow gave Emma up to give her, her best chance and fought for them to have a relationship post-curse. It’s not always perfect, but you cannot deny that Snow loves Emma with everything in her and would die protecting her.
Then there was Emma’s first family. The mother that gave her away, because she had another child. For 3 years, she raised Emma and gave her a home. That had to stick with Emma, even just a tiny bit.
(No picture because we never saw them)
Before Ingrid, Emma was placed in a foster home that treated her pretty well. They’re going to bring Emma on her first ever vacation. We know that Katie (the foster mother) treated her like one of her own children. She’s the one that tries to explain that she does view Emma as one of theirs, even if Bill clearly doesn’t.
Unfortunately, this was probably when Emma began to realize that she was right when she left the group home in Boston. No one is ever going to look at her and see “kid”.
A bit later, we see Ingrid with Emma. Ingrid takes an interest with Emma and actually does things with her. She even wanted to adopt her. We see that Emma had even told Ingrid that she loved her. Even though Ingrid made it clear they could be like sisters, you could tell that Emma viewed this as one of her most positive mother role models. Until Ingrid pushed her in front of a car and showed Emma that she really couldn’t trust anyone.
The final mother figure we see is Cleo Fox. She’s the one that teaches Emma a very valuable lesson, and that’s in the art of letting go. Emma has allowed herself to be emotional over these things for years and it’s controlling her life. She’s a thief and she’s constantly on the run. Cleo tells her to make something of herself. Stop running and face your problems. It’s what inspired Emma to start her career and her adult life. It proves that just because you’re an adult, it doesn’t mean you’re too old for a little parenting lesson. And I think that would later come full circle with Emma allowing her own mother to parent her in a sense from time to time by giving her advice.