What Does It Really Mean To Be A Mother?

Love Is Meant To Transcend Bloodlines

I was born to be a mother but not in the traditional sense, though my values are certainly based on traditions passed down through generations of my people.

As a child, I became what we call in psychosocial science, parentalized. My parents had their own demons to overcome, compelling me to adopt roles that were not typical for someone my age—essentially, caring for those who were supposed to care for me. This, however, was the greatest gift my parents could have given me. It was my earliest introduction to becoming that which I was born to become.

From the time I was three, our family shared a driveway with another family in Columbia, one much more traditional than my own.

While my mother chose to prioritize her career, the mother next door got to be a full-time parent, a role I observed as the greatest position one could have.

I never imagined myself with a husband, given I didn't have a solid model for that. But having primarily raised myself, I knew what a little girl needed to thrive, through the absence of what I believed I lacked.

While I knew no single mothers as a child, it was what I always sensed I would be. God coded me in this way, but producing a baby wasn't part of the plan, as I shared in this recent podcast episode I was featured on.

Today on the Growth Seekers Welcome podcast, we dropped the follow-up to that conversation, and in other writings and episodes I've shared more.

Motherhood is much more than the social construct we’ve come to believe in Western societies. In contrast, many Eastern cultures see motherhood as a communal responsibility, where the entire extended family and community actively participate in nurturing the young. This communal approach highlights the profound bond and shared responsibility that defines motherhood in these cultures, contrasting sharply with the often individualistic approach seen in the West.

Regardless of society and culture, motherhood is indeed a divine calling which requires the cooperation of countless supportive participants, both male and female. It is not a solo endeavor, nor one which is as binary as most would like to think. It is the opportunity to create, nurture, and imbue wisdom onto any other, for the purpose of our greatest evolution as a species.

The truth of a mother's love is unconditional, and unconditional love is the greatest challenge to the ego. To truly love another is to be able to live and let live, despite the knowledge that the child must know pain. It is natural to want to protect those we feel connection to, but how and why we feel this way tend to be much more complex than most humans fully ever grasp.

This Mother’s Day, which is a man-made holiday, developed for the consumer-driven model that fuels our modern society, I encourage you to take a moment and appreciate all of the women throughout your life who have contributed, for without their sacrifice of themselves in some way, you would never have been able to become who you truly are today.

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