Mommy Issues
I created a zine page a while back requesting us to discuss ‘mommy issues’, but since this term is colloquially used towards men that indirectly search for motherly affection from their partners, I want to make it clear that my zine page refers to a separate issue.
I want to talk about mothers, I truly believe that we do not speak on mothers enough. They have become the pivotal point of what young boys and girls come to be in adulthood. Before I carry on, I wanted to mention that both men and women are equally responsible for children, not just the mother, not just the father. This post will discuss absent (in mind and spirit) mothers for the most part. I’ll save daddy issues for another day.
If one was to do a basic search on defining the term ‘mother’, you’d find definitions in particular order stating; (noun) a woman in relation to her child or children. (verb) 1. bring up (a child) with care and affection. 2. give birth to. Yet the definition of a father states; (noun) a man in relation to his child or children. (verb) 1. to cause a pregnancy resulting in the birth of a child. I must now ask, how do these reflect of our mothers and fathers today? The definitions and real mothers and fathers almost stare back at one another, mirroring each other. It’s unfortunate that many children come into the world where the parents that created their beautiful spirit are imbalanced and unfair to one another. My point is, from the get go mothers are left with children, and pressured to bring up a child with care and affection, that expectation is written in the fine print for young women just in case they forgot. And as a extra heads up, the verb to nurture comes before the verb to give birth, it’s upsetting.
I have Pakistani born parents, and its interesting to see how absent our Pakistani fathers (not all, there’s always some good apples) have been of our achievements as a young generation. How disconnected they are with their offspring, and more importantly find that they should be praised as a good man if they serve a purpose that women have been pressured to do alone for a long time- bring up a child with care and affection. There is a big difference in being praised for good parenting and requiring praise in order to parent as you should. We like to drag men down on their absent parenting but what about mothers? It happens, we have mommy issues, and they’re prevalent amongst the British- Pakistani diaspora. Aside from this point, even when I look at the young minority ethnic generation as a whole, of friends, people I love, even family, we have mommy issues. It’s not just grown men, it’s young boys and girls. It’s teen girls and boys, and more importantly grown women.
Young ethnic women everyday remedy mommy issues by indulging in the very things that allows those issues to exist; siding with trust issues, crippling self-esteem, appeasing exploitative power imbalance, difficult communication, continually dating someone that is fairly older, being jealous yet not providing affection etc. The point is, no partner can mother (or father) you, but you can learn from your mother. And with that learning comes the practice of what you have always seen your mother practice from her parents or mother. I’ve written previously about children being like sponges:
It is often said that children are like sponges, their brains are grasping and learning at phenomenal speeds but they soak up more than their academia and so many parents forget this.They soak up the energy of their surroundings; they soak up the physical states of their space, the buildings and nature; they soak up words not because they are spoken in their presence but how they are used, they soak up all things love and all things hate. Just as a sponge doesn’t discriminate in soaking up the clean or muddy water it’s thrown in, children are the same when they’re born into their worlds.
We indulge in practices that we’ve seen in our mothers. Even when we know they are unhealthier practices, we keep to these destructive things because they are safer, manageable and familiar- essentially they feel right. If we haven’t seen our mothers ask for things or assert themselves with our fathers, we will not initially know how to do the same. If brown women witnessed what working hard for yourself, taking to freedom, keeping to your truth against the odds and asserting yourself, young brown women would know how to practice the same. We witness and re-manifest what our mothers witnessed and re-manifested from their parents. The point is, we know what we are doing wrong, but what are we doing right?
We cannot remedy issues with more issues. If we witnessed brown mothers communicate, assert and navigate situations, their daughters would only know how to handle situations in this way. It isn’t about being above men, but to be able to sit at the same table with them without thinking twice. If young brown women were able to communicate righteously, we’d be advantaged in navigating situations, not to favour us but to be able to have a say and allow it to manifest because we have asked for it. I believe your sense of communication and attracting what you are manifest greatly as you grow older, if brown women were taught to learn and explore what they want we wouldn’t mistrust the world around us and the people in it. This is because we would’ve explored it, we would know it. If we witnessed mothers that took care of their mental and physical health, we wouldn’t have as many problems with our self-esteem, our weight and being uncomfortable in our bodies. We practice and handle things same as the older woman we were around the most growing up, for most brown women that was their mother. We indulge in the same problems, we manifest the same health, we let ourselves down in the same way. Our sense of self and creating our own lives are amiss.
If brown women could un-learn the bad behaviours of absent mothers, we’d give our spiritual selves space to finally explore and find what we want. The willingness to unlearn is still brittle because unfortunately the familiarity of suffering, which is an option, outweighs pain which is a definite aspect of life. Above all things, mommy issues search for love, but when your spirit has walked the earth for a while, one can learn that if you come to truly love yourself, you wouldn’t know how to hurt the other. If it means that brown women are deficient in loving themselves, then it’s okay to simply start at this point.
Let’s begin to un-learn to make space to re-learn. Let’s change the way we perceive ourselves and how we’re meant to be. It’s the only way can rebuild for change. And most importantly, let’s talk about Mommy issues.
Have a great day.
-AIN
