Growing up, I had a picture in my mind of what it would be like to be an adult. Slowly, as I got older, this picture kept changing and adjusting to keep up with all that I saw displayed by the varying influences around me. Even though I grew up in a home where there were yelling matches (which eventuated in divorce), as a really young child I didn’t see any of these problems existing in my own future. Instead, I saw the rosy pictures that were depicted on TV and in fairytales to be my own future. As I grew up I soon realised that life was something of an arduous task. The idea that life could be fun and or rosy slowly slipped from my created reality…
No-one at any time that I can remember sat me down and asked me how I viewed my future – I was a female, so it was assumed I would get married and have children. But I was never asked if this is what I wanted, or not. When adults would see either myself or my sisters play with our toy dolls, they would comment “Oh she’ll make a great mother one day”, or something along those lines. And when I started to cook, the comments would be “You’ll make some man really happy one day”. So I learned from a very young age that I was destined to become a mother and a wife. I didn’t really question this, because everywhere I looked, that was what ‘being a woman’ meant – growing up and being there for everyone else’s needs.
If for some reason a woman could not have children, as I understood things, this would mean she would be a sad person, as she was unable to fulfill her role of becoming a mother; or she would feel to be quite driven and hard, which I found scary!
My own mother and I never sat down together and discussed how I felt about actually becoming a woman, and what this may potentially entail for me as I grew up. For example, did I want children? A partner? A certain type of job or career? Did I feel pressure of what the outside world, school and society thought ‘being a woman’, and ‘her role’ was in life? This is not saying my mother did anything wrong by not having these conversations with me, certainly not! My mother may have experienced the exact same (as I) as a young girl with her own mother. And, like myself, in the absence of someone asking her how she felt, she too may have learnt to suppress her feelings as she got older…
So growing up as a young girl, the understandings I was forming about ‘adult life’ just became an accepted way of how life was. On reflecting back now, I realise there was no time for my mother to just sit and chat with me about how I felt about anything, since life was a daily challenge. From what I saw, it seemed that for my mother, life required certain outcomes to be a success, for instance getting the kids off to school, going to work, coming home, start preparing dinner, ordering the kids into showers, eating dinner and finally collapsing in front of the TV to rest and de-stress from the day. Daily life was a chore in general, with a few happy occasions sprinkled here and there. It was never displayed or expressed that life, as an adult woman or mother, could be a joy-full or play-full experience. Instead, life was shown to be a hard endeavour that had end goals, which needed to be met under duress. Life in general, was a stressful event.
I would watch my mother and my friends’ mothers all go about their day (even on the weekends) in an agitated manner. There was so much to achieve, even though they felt tired and needed a rest. Children were mostly viewed as a ‘thorn in their side’ who just got in the way and were consistently making more work for their mothers. As a young child, I felt this quite acutely. I was saddened by how hard life was for my mother, and so would try to make life easier for her by helping with jobs. I made it my role to fix things. Most likely, I willingly took on this role of ‘the fixer’ to cover up the very deep sadness I felt in not being cherished, seen and held as the beautiful little girl I was, and had felt myself to be. Instead, I became ‘seen’ or validated by my parents and people through learning ‘to do’ (things) and ‘achieve’ what others wanted and expected of me.
Without even realising it, this is when I started to really model myself on what being a woman / mother meant. I started to see where others were struggling and would try to ‘fix’ their situation. For instance, if someone was sad, I would try to make them laugh, or if someone had too much work to do, then I would try to do it for them, and the list goes on. It’s possible I started to act out this ‘fixer / helper role’ for two reasons: firstly, I strongly felt that I was the reason life was hard and why it was a daily grind to get through it; secondly, I had watched how it was my mother’s job to fix everything for everyone – and so I started to mimic this. So, by keeping myself really busy I avoided feeling my sadness through managing to turn situations around. Hence, no longer was I the problem – but was now conveniently the solution.
How sad is it that our young daughters today may be going through exactly what we went through ourselves, simply because we (unknowingly) carry the hurt of our own childhoods. Not knowing how to deal with this hurt could mean we actually avoid talking about these subjects with our own daughters…
How refreshing would it be to let go of these hurts and open up to our daughters so that they could discuss how they feel, instead of us going into self-blame or the fix-a-holic mode that we do so well?
When I was a teenager, I went ‘quite wild’ for a while and reflecting back now, do wonder if this was me perhaps in rebellion to what I could feel that lay ahead of me!… Indeed, my rebellion with such ‘wild behaviours’ feels like it was because I knew that the roles I saw being played out by women just didn’t feel right to or for me (to then have ‘one day’ for myself). And that I wanted no part to play in that world.
As grown women we have such an opportunity to live in a way in which young girls can be inspired. This starts with the tender honouring of oneself – as a woman.
I only started to consider and ask all these questions for myself when inspired by Natalie Benhayon’s (an Esoteric Practitioner) Presentation at a Women’s Group which I attended through Universal Medicine. And I am so glad I’ve been able to have this opportunity, as now my own daughter and I have an amazing relationship that just grows richer and richer – the more I feel and share with her, the more she feels and shares with me.
by TS