I don’t usually write about my kids. It’s been a kind of unspoken rule I have had for my writing. Today I’m breaking that rule.
This morning, while in meditation, the words to this essay began taking shape.
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I have two beautiful and amazing children. My daughters, T and N, were the first two black women I ever truly admired. I have always marveled at them for their brilliant minds and engaging personalities. For a long time, I couldn’t believe these two dynamic and intelligent young women came from my body.
In 2020, a few weeks into the COVID-19 shutdown, I blew up our relationship.
I told my daughters I needed a break from communicating with them. At the time T and N were 32 and 29, each living independently in a different state. One, a business marketing professional, and the other, a registered nurse.
The break that I announced would go from lasting a few weeks to lasting a few months. It was a time of great overwhelm for me. My mother role felt like it was snowballing and I didn’t know how to stop its roll of increasingly heavier expectations.
It went from a job of mothering small children to mothering teenagers to mothering young adults. Mothering under any and all circumstances. Mothering with no end in sight. Mothering until death. How to keep showing up for one’s children. How to step up and mother even harder during a national crisis such as a pandemic.
I screwed it up. I simply couldn’t do it.
During that year I was in the midst of book writing. I was desperate to finish my first book in order to return to a second book that was already in the works. I was having a hard time taking myself seriously as a writer. I felt like a fraud most of the time. I was battling demons, the voices in my head who told me loudly and often how unworthy I was, and how pathetic it was that I thought I was smart enough to write books. Those voices told me a lot of shitty things that I have been fighting against believing my entire life.
I was caught in the thorny snares of a life season that I didn’t see coming–
How to go from being a woman borne of a mentally ill mother who never learned how to show her offspring love, to being a woman with children of her own, children who expected unconditional love. Of course. Unconditional love is what all children deserve. But I was generating the kind of love I had no real examples of in my own experiences. I came from a childhood home that was violent and abusive.
As for loving my own children— I was flying by the seat of my pants, making up the love I was showing them based on instincts, and based on what I had learned from television and books.
When it comes to mothering, The World doesn’t care about what ails you mentally or physically. We mothers do not get a pass if we are struggling. There are messages everywhere—narratives in movies, television, books, and all other media; and the people in our lives reinforcing those narratives—which demand that we keep showing up and keep getting the mothering job done. Period. No half measures. No excuses.
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Overall, I know I did a great job raising my daughters. I’m proud of the job I did. I gave my whole heart and my whole self to raising them. I wanted my daughters to have a better life than the one I had. I was a single-parent for most of their childhood, so I had to be creative with making money stretch. I worked hard and gave them what my rotating salaries could buy from one workplace to the next. I tried to make them feel more love than I ever felt in my own childhood. I gushed over them—praising them, celebrating all achievements big and small, repeatedly reminding each of them of their awesomeness.
And! I also fucked up. I made numerous bad choices while parenting. I had a bad temper and a mean mouth. In anger, I said some shitty things. And I didn’t always stand up to the bad behavior of other family members to protect or defend them, especially my oldest daughter.
And yet, I got us to the finish line. I raised my two daughters to adulthood. I’ve said humorously to myself—they didn’t die on my watch. I know. My humor is sometimes dark and twisted. I’m ALL the things, not good and kind all the time. I’m good with this. My self-acceptance no longer has conditions.
When I decided to have kids, as naïve as this sounds, I never thought my childhood beginnings would factor into our lives together as mother and offspring. I know. Of course, it would. But I wasn’t very smart back then. I thought all I had to do was keep showing up with bucketloads of love for my kids and I would figure the rest out along the way.
My own mother was actively toxic, meanspirited. She seemed unable to keep herself from spewing hateful comments. She seemed to relish throwing insults at me, subtle digs sometimes disguised as jokes. I had to walk away from her, shut her out of my life. If I stayed, I would always be full of pain and self-hate and rage. If I stayed, I would keep exposing myself to my mother’s bitterness. If I stayed, I would always feel like I sold out my little girl self for appearances, trying to be a good daughter. So in 2015, I stopped visiting my mother, stopped taking her phone calls, and I tried to be a better mother to my own children.
Due to some of my bad behavior as a younger parent, I was convinced that simple apologies to T and N wouldn’t be enough. I thought I should live in perpetual amends to them as a mother. Live life making up for my parenting mistakes. Be available. Be extra loving. Be super mom.
But I was drowning. I couldn’t breathe. My childhood life had already been snatched away from me. And now as an adult, I somehow managed to end up in a kind of motherhood prison. It felt like purgatory with no apparent end.
In the years leading up to 2020, I tried to change the dynamics between my daughters and myself. I tried to set boundaries, tried to be less available. But it just wasn’t working. And I didn’t want them to be disappointed with me. Privately, I was at a loss about what to do. How to put myself first without hurting my girls.
Well, the Universe stepped in and forced my hand.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States. I found myself on frequent phone calls with each of my daughters discussing COVID death updates, new CDC mandates, and police violence. Privately I was freaking out because I didn’t want to keep having these kinds of conversations with anyone. I wanted to opt out of the nation’s panic mode. My entire childhood was a crisis. I didn’t want to live like that all over again because of a pandemic. I needed to find a way to take my life back (again). But how to do this without inciting the wrath of my daughters? Without making them feel like I was abandoning them.
I couldn’t sleep at night. I started feeling random joint pain in my shoulders, in my elbows, and in my hips. During the days my head was swimming with voices, making me feel as if I was trapped under the bleachers of a packed football stadium—people everywhere, shouting. In my head, the voices: replaying conversations, phrases from television news, rehearsing words I wanted to say. I couldn’t think. My body was screaming at me to do something.
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Here’s what I learned about that fateful year, the turning point in the relationship between me and my daughters:
I love myself more than I love my children. Yes, I absolutely do.
Does that mean I wouldn’t protect them from harm? No. If there was a plane crash or some psycho toting a gun, shooting random people, without hesitation, I would give up my own life in exchange for theirs.
And! This fact still stands– I love myself more than I love my daughters. Just like I love myself more than I love my husband. I love myself more than I love every single person in my life.
I had to fight through destructive parents and nightmares and mind-demons to feel this kind of love for my own self. There is a little girl inside of me who is still easily spooked, still full of her own fears. No one protected her. No one looked out for her. All she ever had was herself. I am that self. And if I don’t take care of me—take care of the little girl inside of me—no one else is going to do it. At least not in a way that keeps me centered. Not in a way that keeps me thriving. Not in a way where my own needs will be met first.
No one can love us in the same pure way we are naturally capable of loving ourselves.
What I did in 2020 changed the relationship I had with my daughters. Not in a good way. But in a needed way. We have had to rebuild our friendships as mother and respective daughters. Sometimes the vibe between us is awkward and strained with a kind of weird politeness. On good days, sometimes there’s the old laughter shared between us. It’s not the way it used to be. Our exchanges are no longer fluid and easy. And that’s okay. Family members—including mothers—are allowed to change, to become different people. It takes time to adjust to change.
What I know for sure is this– tremendous love still exists between the three of us. And I trust that love to take all the time it needs to reshape us into the woman we are each striving to become.
We—every single human being on the planet—deserve to live a life that makes us happy.
Have you ever been in the difficult position of having to choose your own needs over a loved one? Who did you choose? Who would you choose if you could have a do-over? As difficult as choosing was for me in 2020, I would choose the same way again today. My daughters may have felt disappointed for a while–maybe they still are–with our relationship change, but they are also each intelligent and capable. And I trust that they will find their own way in this world, rising to become the phenoms that all black women were born to become.
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My second book is progressing toward completion. It’s been a long time coming (almost five years!). This book is about black women’s friendships and how we get along with each other. I surveyed almost three hundred black women and interviewed twenty-nine of them for this book. Sign up for my newsletter to get book updates.
I will also be looking for early readers to write honest reviews for this book. Subscribers to my newsletter will be given priority over others to be selected for the chance to win free advance copies of the book. So stay tuned, lovely! 😆
Thank you for being here. I see you. I love you. Keep shining your light into the world.
Love, Mia 💕
Originally published: March 23, 2023