Talk Thursday: My Mother’s Gift - Herself

First I would like to say my heart goes out to my dear friend JulieAnn who is suffering heartache and sorrow today. Her mother was the inspiration for this week's Talk Thursday topic. This morning her much loved mother passed, one year to the day of her father's passing. JulieAnn my love and strenght to you and yours.

My Mother's Gift ♥ Herself

All of my adult life I have tried to live up to a specific example of motherhood: Superwoman. I feel doomed to failure. I remember the first time I admitted to my mom that I’d made hamburger helper for dinner. I felt like an entire failure of womanhood (I hadn’t told her my husband had requested the mass produced crunchy dried boxed potatoes and chemical sauce) not that she made me feel that way, but in my heart I'd failed to do what my mom would have done. The woman will cook almost anything once (but not hamburger helper.) To this day my mother is testing out new recipes.

Before marrying my father (like most women of her generation and before) my mother had never lived on her own. Before marrying my father, my mother had never cooked a meal; never sewn a stitch, most likely never changed a diaper. It’s not an easy transition going for the world of the entitled to the life of lower middle class housewife. But she did it, making up for the things she’d never experienced with her own mother along the way. When my mother was growing up it was all about my grandmother and my aunt.

My mother gave her all to be the best mother and wife she could possibly be. And it wasn’t an easy task. She’d had no role model from which to draw her ideals and mold her self after.

She is Mares Eat Oates and Does Eat Oates, she is Lavender Blue Dilly Dilly. She can be anything you want her to be, she is mom, one of the most vital parts of me and who I am today.

My mother threw herself into motherhood heart, body, and soul Teaching us to give with compassion, think for ourselves, and to question what we didn’t know or understand in a time long before soccer mom’s ruled the hectic family schedule my mom was ferrying her children to dance class, baseball practices, swimming lessons, and running the snack shack at each game. She was a Brownie leader, a den mother, Girl Scout leader, pack mom. She volunteered in the school library. She supported her children in every possible way she could, giving us her youth and the best of what she knew she could be.

My mother never said…
“I can’t do that.”
“You can’t be that.”
It was always, “You can be what ever you want with enough hard work and will power.”

But the most important lessons my mother gave me were about the importance of me. They still are today as they were yesterday and will be still more tomorrow.

1) I am only as good as my word
2) I have to like myself before anyone else can
3) Give fully of yourself, don’t do it half assed
4) Do for others without expectation of payback, solely because it’s the right thing to do (early pay it forward.)
5) And that will be 25 cents, don’t cuss

To this day I am trying to live up to the example that my mom has always set. She is strong, loving, giving, and willing. And thank God, besides being my mother and role model she’s my friend. Her gift was and always is herself.

Sith
Cele