While scrolling through my feed a few days ago, I came across a repost from the motherhood community. I decided to check out the post because I really enjoy reading about motherhood and parenting. I like to keep a few things in mind for the future, and besides, I’m an aunt. Whenever my nieces or nephew are around and left in my care, I automatically enter full parenting mode.
So I read the post, and I noticed that the mother who wrote it had dreams. Vibrant, beautiful dreams. Dreams she was excited about but somewhere along the line, motherhood happened, and those dreams were put aside. For a moment, my heart broke because it felt like I was reading my mother’s story.
My mother loves her children deeply, but she also had dreams of her own. She wanted a particular kind of life, and somewhere along the way, she decided that giving us the childhood and upbringing she wanted for us meant putting her own dreams on hold. There is something undeniably beautiful and heroic about a mother making sacrifices for her children. But I want to speak from the perspective of the child whose mother abandoned her dreams so that hers could bloom.
Honestly, I wish my mother had never abandoned her dreams completely. I wish she had found a way to keep some part of herself alive while raising us. I wish she had managed to build her own life even while we were in the picture.
Whenever I listen to her talk about the things she once wanted to achieve, I can still see the excitement in her eyes. She speaks about those dreams with so much light in her face, and then, when she finishes telling me about them, the light fades. Sometimes all that is left is a little gleam of tears in her eyes, followed by a sigh and the inevitable, “But I still love you all.” That breaks my very fragile heart. Always.
If wishes were horses, I would turn back the hands of time and make sure my mother had the opportunity to experience some of the life she had imagined for herself before motherhood became her entire world. I understand that juggling children, a career, a home and personal ambitions is not easy. Sometimes life simply does not give women the support or opportunities they need. Sometimes the sacrifices are unavoidable. I know it isn’t as simple as telling every mother to “just pursue your dreams.”
But I have also read and heard the stories of women who managed to raise children while building careers, businesses and other things they were passionate about. It may take longer, it may require help, sacrifice, creativity and a lot of determination, but I don’t believe motherhood should automatically mean the death of every other part of a woman.
Women are already capable of carrying so many things at once. Women work, raise children, run homes, care for everyone around and somehow still find the strength to keep going. So perhaps, where circumstances allow, chasing that dream can also find a little space in the frame. And imagine how proud your children would be to watch you achieve it.
I love my mother deeply, but I think I would love her in an entirely different way if she called me one day and said, “I finally did it.”
If she told me she had brought those old dreams back to life. If she became the woman she once imagined she would be. If she finally got to see some of those pictures she had carried in her head since she was as young as I am now. I would be incredibly proud of her.
Having children shouldn’t automatically mean giving up on becoming the doctor, aviator, businesswoman, writer, artist or whatever else you once dreamed of becoming.
I have learned a lot from reading about women’s experiences and struggles on Hive. One thing that has stayed with me is how often motherhood becomes the point at which women begin putting themselves last. Sometimes circumstances force this. Sometimes society expects it. Sometimes women simply believe that being a good mother requires complete self-abandonment and that has taught me something about the patterns I want to avoid in my own life.
Whenever motherhood eventually finds me, I want to be a proud mother and a proud dream achiever. I want my children to see me loving them without losing myself. I want them to grow up knowing that their mother had dreams before they came along and that she didn’t have to bury those dreams simply because she became their mother. I want them to see me happy because I think children want that more than we realise.
So, dear mothers, dear women, please don’t lose yourself completely in the process of raising your children. I know you’re doing a great job. I know you love your children so deeply that you’d probably walk to the ends of the earth for them. I know there are sacrifices that come with motherhood, and sometimes you have no choice but to make them.
But where you can, make room for yourself too. Your children don’t only need a mother who sacrificed everything for them, they also want to see the woman who gave birth to them become everything she once dreamed of becoming.
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