As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize what most people want more than anything is a witness to their story. Why do we think that social media has become so popular? Most people just want someone to listen. Most people want to be validated and comforted that they are doing their best as they experience the incredulousness of living a life on this Earth. Yesterday, I was trying to get a million errands done because we are having company this weekend. However, the cashier who was waiting on me at one of my stops, clearly needed me to hear her story. I sensed this – intuitively but also because she mentioned to me more than once that she had not had an easy life. To be fair, I was also sensing my own inner aggravations about time limits, and I was feeling the impatience of the people behind me, but something told me that it was more important in that particular moment that I could easily fulfill an obviously strong need of another living being to be heard, by just intently listening. I am a big believer in boundaries, but I am a bigger believer in listening to my intuition and my inner spirit, and something deeply calmed in me, and so I became a listener, a witness, and a validator to a woman named Sue.
Sue was an orphan of Indian descent. She was raised by nuns in a convent in Ediburgh, Scotland. Most of the nuns were good, sweet ladies, but the head nun was horrific, mean and controlling. Sue was a natural student and so by the age of 15, the head nun had made Sue start teaching the other children at the orphanage. Sue knew that this was not right. Sue was still a child herself. She told the head nun this fact and was dearly punished for it. So Sue kept calm, put her head down, kept with her studies, and despite the nuns pressuring her to stay at the convent and teach, she left the orphanage at the age of 18 and continued at university, while also working and living in a small apartment with five other women. Sue became an educator in a school of her choosing, and won more than one teaching award throughout her career. Sue also met the love of her life, an older man and a doctor. They married, had two children and Sue was living the life of her dreams, but unfortunately her husband suddenly passed away. At that time, her two young children begged Sue to move from Scotland to New York City, as Scotland was the land of their father and there were too many memories for all of them to bear there. So Sue finished raising her kids in New York City, and both of them have gone on to be successful in their lives and have families of their own. Sue’s children and friends all thought that she should remarry, but Sue felt that she already experienced the one great love of her life. When Sue retired, for better winter weather, she chose to move on her own to Florida, with her children’s blessing. Sue likes cashiering because she likes to keep busy and to meet people. I told Sue, “You have always had a strong spirit, it seems.”
She sighed, “I didn’t have a choice.”
I said to her, “I know that you didn’t want any of these hardships, but you stepped up to the plate. You met them. You endured and even thrived.”
Sue clasped my hands and thanked me. “He died 22 years ago today,” she said with watery eyes. And it was then that my heart knew that I was right to listen to it, and to hear Sue. And not surprisingly, I got everything done that I needed to get done for the rest of the day.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
“Culture The Moms Are Not Alright What’s going on: We’re still months away from Mother’s Day, but Hollywood can’t stop putting moms on the big screen right now — and they aren’t just supporting characters. Two movies are currently driving the conversation: Jennifer Lawrence’s Die My Love and Rose Byrne’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. As Glamour puts it, they’re all about the mom meltdown. Lawrence portrays a new mom battling postpartum depression, and Byrne plays a single mother caring for a sick child while trying to hold it together. The stories are wildly different, but the women do share this: valid crash-outs. And in each case, a frustrating partner helps push them there. (Because honestly, who gives a new mom a puppy?) What it means: Motherhood in America is a pressure cooker. Child care costs averaged $13,000 in 2024, according to one report. Nearly half of all mothers report symptoms of postpartum depression. Add the centuries-old demand to be the “perfect mom,” and it’s no wonder so many feel like they’re falling apart. These films don’t just tell that story — they confront it. Each one holds up a mirror to how society rushes to judge mothers for cracking under impossible expectations instead of asking what broke them in the first place. The result? A cultural moment that feels less like escapism and more like recognition. The only question now: Will people watch a movie that feels this close to real life?” – The Daily Skimm
I hadn’t planned on writing this morning. Lately, my inspirational “hits” have been more focused on my transforming “nest” and the upcoming holidays, but then I read the above blurb from the Daily Skimm. As a woman who is over the hump of raising her kids (my eldest son of our four “children” will be 30 in April, and our daughter, the youngest is 22) and as a mother, who has passed the threshold of the everyday duties of raising kids to become functioning adults, the words that I read above were still recognizable, and reverberating in my body. I ached with compassion for these fictional characters, and also for the many, many non-fictional women, over decades of generations, whom these characters represent. I ached with compassion for my younger self.
I intimately knew many fellow mothers throughout the years of raising my children. Despite our different theories, methods and choices in parenting, and despite our wildly different experiences and backgrounds, relationships, and nationalities and beliefs, these other mothers were my comrades and my compadres, my “sisters-in-arms”. I couldn’t have done it without them. Despite how vindictive, judgmental, catty and hard on each other, we women can be, it was the support of other mothers that kept it all afloat for me. It was the validation and the understanding and the quiet knowing of when to step in, and when to cheerlead, and when to send prayers and when to be a strong example (good examples and bad examples) that came from the other mothers (of all different ages) in my life – these are the things, all gifts from the other mothers, which got me to the threshold in one piece.
And so “crashing out”, “meltdowning”, “trying desperately to be perfect” mommy, let me be your compadre today. Let me be your sister-in-arms. You are okay. You are doing your best. You do not have to meet impossible expectations. You have many other women in your life who are mothers and who completely get it. Find the ones whom you feel safe enough to be vulnerable with, and let it all out. You love your kids. If there is one thing that all of us mothers understand is the undeniable strength that a mother carries every single day of her life until the day that she dies, because she allows her heart to walk far away from herself, into many unknown dangers and adventures and escapades, all apart from her, in all different directions, from the moment she experiences her first child’s first breath. A mother’s heart has pieces of itself scattered in many different directions, throughout the rest of her life. Understanding this, why would it not be hard to hold it all together? Sweet mother, answer me this, with the pieces of your heart scattering in the wind, how could you not have moments of crashing out and melting down? Why, in your unholy perfectionism, are you the hardest on yourself?
Movies are great for “escapism”, but people who actually intimately know what you are going through in life, are great for “recognition.” If you don’t need to see your life, dramatically splayed out on the big screen, that’s okay. But I guarantee you, in real life, you need someone who “sees” you. You need someone who can validate what you are experiencing, as a mother, externally and internally. Find those other mothers. Find the ones who are going through it with you, and also find those mothers, like me, who have graduated to a different level of holding up the scaffolding of a family that she has already built. Find those other mothers, and let them in. Throughout raising my children, I knew young mothers and older ones, working moms and stay-at-home ones, married moms and single ones, straight moms and gay ones, religious moms and non-religious ones, moms of huge broods and moms of onlies, rich moms and poor moms, and guess what? None of us were perfect. We all had our “crash out” moments (and we all still do). None of us cracked the “perfect mothering formula”, but the one thing that we all had in common is that we loved our children ferociously. I saw this meme the other day that stated it perfectly: “Mama Bear is such a sweet way to describe the fact that I’d tear you open and eat your insides if you hurt my child.”
Dear sweet mother, who is reading this right now, all of the while feeling like she may explode in her own pressure cooker of steamed, mixed-up feelings of anger, frustration, fear, guilt, resentment, loneliness, shame, doubt, unworthiness, hopelessness, worry and regret, let some of the air out. Let yourself breathe. Then take a look around. You aren’t doing this alone. Within blocks of you, within clicks on a computer, are other mothers who empathize with you so completely, and all that they are asking for, is just a little bit of your own empathy back. Dear sweet mother, as I continue to build the scaffolding of my own family and I continue to support my own life, and the lives whom I brought to this Earth (we mothers carry a load), I offer you tools from my own toolbox. I offer you a seat, where you can rest and wipe your brow. I offer you the wisdom of my experiences – what worked for me, and what did not. But mostly, I offer you my love and my reassurance. You already have all of the tools you need. You are doing a great job, working on that gorgeous building that so many generations of women behind you started, and added to, all the while doubting themselves, having crashout moments and many a meltdown, along the way. And yet, here we mothers are, still growing and still building away. There should be another word besides “other mother” which describe a different mother than you. In many ways, our mothering journey is the same. Our Mother Earth knows this intimately and ultimately. She knows in the end, we are all just truly One and that’s why we can rest so deeply in her compassionate and empathetic arms. Dear sweet mothers, give yourselves moments of resting in Her calming arms. See Her in the eyes of the “other mothers”. You are not alone. You never were alone.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
