We are proud to be like our mothers, but some legacy needs to be allowed to go
For most of us, the bond we share with our mothers are the most nurtured. Perhaps that’s why we follow them so easily. But when their intentions are rarely harmful, many of the heritage they leave are inadvertently surrounded, and some of them, although well mean, need to interrogate and let go slowly.
A really tired Sunday, last midnight, when I should have been in bed, I found myself in the kitchen, wrapping after guests. It was Sunday evening, yet I could not refuse to refuse myself. And despite my husband’s insistence, I refused to order dinner from outside. I gave the slogan through it, ruined my Sunday, and I was there, still in the kitchen, feeling unpleasant dry, already reducing the beginning of another week.
I didn’t think much about it until I came in a post by an acquaintance on Mother’s Day: “I am a lot like my mother, but I am not proud of it.” It was a simple post, yet it hit a raga. She talked about how her mother involved some behavior about her, things that she now knows does not want to pass her children. She wrote, “It is not that she was bad or we were deprived of any way. But it was her conditioning that I could not, or instead, was trying to make unknown.”
That post was with me. This reflected me on her conditioning, as a child, as a woman. Whatever I have learned, from kitchen work to balance the house and work, my mother’s influence has been woven through it. Whenever guests come, with automatic, almost binding instincts to serve home-cooked food.
The writer was not harassing his mother. She was just questioning heritage, conditioning. And this surprised me: how many of us are doing the same thing? Pass on the same cool sacrifices with a ribbon of duty and love wrapped around them.
“Many women see their mothers equal to sacrifice with strength,” Dr. Chandy Tuganit, psychiatrist and founder of the Gateway of Healing. “They saw that they hold the families together, suppress the emotions, dilute themselves, and somewhere, they absorbed the idea that it meant being a good woman.”
We often celebrate it as flexibility. And to be fair, this is. But is it possible that there was a woman behind that flexibility, who was tired, angry, was alone, but was very dignified to say loudly?
ABS Sam, a counseling psychologist in Mumbai, honestly opens about this tug-off-wore. “My mother was a superwoman, a medical officer, a community teacher, a mother, a mother who did all this. But in doing all this, she lost myself. I saw her the health of all, but in reality never took my own priority.
Dr. Tuganite calls it the myth of “an ideal role”.
“Women were expected to care for careful, pacifists and perfections.
the hardest part? guilty feeling.
For most of us, how our mothers made us air -conditioned, which can make us feel like betrayal, even if it is for our existence. We struggle to separate gratitude from obligation. As Dr. Chandni says, “Gratitude says,” I see you, I thank you, and now I will walk in my own way. ” The responsibility whispered, ‘You give her credit for your choice.’ But when we confuse both, we live a life that we did not choose, out of love, yes, but also out of fear. ,
58-year-old Ausree Sen is a Kolkata-based teacher, born in the mid-60s as a fifth daughter in a traditional Indian family. She remembers how her own mother, despite being modern and educated, could not fully support her when it came in the decisions of a big life.
“I was selected for a job in Delhi after a big thing from NIIT in 1990, but I got married instead. Later, when I got a chance to work in a night shift in a corporate job, I was asked to go for the sake of family.” And yet, she says, her mother’s views evolved over time. “As he saw how the world was changing, he encouraged us to let our daughters fly. Today, I am chasing a PhD in Sonipat, and I am proud that he has that freedom, and I also proud to the fact that I let some conditioning go.”
For abs, the journey is not about rejecting her mother, it is about reclaiming that seems right. “My mother has taught me communication, consent, sympathy; these are gifts that I cherish and pass my daughter. But I am also learning to say that no one, no one, to relax, do not please everyone. I want my daughter to see that strength does not come from silence. It comes from limits.”
There is beauty in recognizing both, what to do, and what to go.
Now, can there be many surprises: men, what about the sons of the house? Shouldn’t they also reflect on the heritage passed by their mothers?
The answer lies in identifying that just tolerates their mothers tolerates everything, and assuming how it should be – that is where the problem begins.
There is a scene in the Understanded film Akash Wani (directed by Love Ranjan), where Sunny Singh’s character, Ravi hopes that he will serve his wife’s dinner and “needy” after returning from work, even when she tells her when she tells her that she is in menstrual pain. His response? ,Humne listens to your mother“(We never heard that our mother did not say that she was ‘below,’ so we had to get our food.)
And exactly what men can unknown. They should ensure this, just because their mothers went through it, the story should not be repeated to their wives or daughters.
And perhaps perhaps it could, it can be just, one day our daughters and sons will say, “I am a lot like my mother. And I am proud, not because he did all this, but because whatever he chose, he chose it. And he chose himself.”