It is not easy to write this today. Someone I loved very much is gone. When someone leaves, you can't help thinking that you could, that you should, have been able to do something, detect how far your despair, your tiredness, your anguish. It's no use to her anymore, but I hope something can help Mothers who feel they can't anymore.
Motherhood deeply removes our conscience, confronts us with the quiet pains of childhood, silence, and duty. Sometimes the pressure is so strong, mothers are so lonely, that they find no other way out than to leave life before continuing to endure a life that is too heavy to bear.
I know that those who look tender to your little ones think that you could never, ever, want to leave them without you in life. That you would endure any illness, suffering, emptiness ... everything, as long as it is there, by your side.
But it's not always like this. We have been educated to withstand penalties and resist with a smile, to accept things that are as they are, not to break schemes, to be submissive, good daughters and wives, model citizens. And we break, we can become mothers who can't anymore.
In your motherhood surely there will be difficult circumstances. Maybe a couple who has become a stranger who doesn't treat you as you deserve. Maybe more work than you can handle or that you are pressured or there is no choice but to work when you want to be with your children. Maybe exhaustion or loneliness. Perhaps, even, a very hard and unsupported breastfeeding that you should end up in weaning without wishing to do so.
Learned helplessness from which we do not know how to get out and crush us, stealing our self-esteem. Perhaps the need, simple and simple, to have time for you, to grow and mature, to laugh and be free, think what no one of you thinks. But nothing should lead you to want to abandon life because you can't anymore.
Being a mother can be very hard
Being a mother is hard. Being a surrendered mother is much more. Days without sleep, breastfeeding without support, that the environment does not support and care for us, can make us feel that we can't anymore, that nothing we do is good anymore, that the future is not worth it. Postpartum depression is one of the toughest circumstances in a mother's life and, if it is not resolved, can leave sequels for years, many years. The reasons for postpartum depression are very varied and unclear, but it happens. That is why we must be attentive to detect it, and act, ask for help from ourselves or that someone from our environment convinces us to do so. Don't let it go to more.
That is why it is essential to know how to ask for help. Not only tell something that worries us, or explain that we are depressed, no. We have to shout. You have to know how to go to someone and tell them that we don't want to live. We must listen and go to a therapist or a psychiatrist if our soul collapses. Before it's too late, before deciding to leave, before be a mother who couldn't take it anymore.
That is why it is also essential that those who surround a mother are willing to accompany her, but above all that those closest to her respect her, listen to her, help her. Never charge them with guilt if something does not work promptly in parenting, even if we do not share your way of seeing it. And help them to empower themselves with the education of their children, so that nobody imposes anything against their feelings or their principles.
There are times when guilt, which haunts us, catches us. We are not good enough, quite selfless, strong enough. And it's a lie, it's the fault that weakens us and makes us want to fulfill a life program that really hurts us. We accept emotional blackmail.
Every woman is different. For some, being with their children at home is the best in the world. But even they need their time and rest. Others want to work hard, but they don't know how to say that here, they need to stop and recognize when work and motherhood are hardly compatible. There are no good or bad mothers for doing one thing or another.
What makes us strong is really doing what resonates as right in us: breastfeeding or weaning, working or staying at home, being wives or being divorced. No one has the right to tell us how we should live. We are only the owners of our life, only we we can stop when we can't anymore.
What our children really need is that we be well, that we are conscious and strong to deal with difficulties, delegating, asking for help, but never consenting to anyone marking us as we should be, how we should live, how we should behave. And not consenting that nobody crushes us for not being like "you have to be."
Educate our daughters in empowerment
We must educate our daughters as empowered beings, aware of their value, their capacity, their strength. Let them know that nobody can harm them or underestimate them, that they do not have to endure a job, a couple or care for their children that will cause them to collapse.
That they have the right to take care of themselves and respect them if the environment does not respect them. That their first duty is to fight to be themselves and be happy, as happy as possible, that nothing must be endured that is superior to their strength, that there is no need to be perfect because they have so much inner power. No one should take away their power.
We must educate our daughters to go with a very high head even if something failed, if they damaged them at all. They are not perfect but they are wonderful and deserve the best, dignity and joy, even if there is illness or problems. Even if they are wrong, they deserve the best, they are powerful and they are not alone, they do not need a man to make sense or give them courage. Teach them to ask for help, to really ask for it.
That they must put on the world by montera and shout that they are free, that they are authentic, that they are the owners of their lives and that no social norm deserves to cry in silence. That nothing deserves to be gone out of fear or despair. That they should never reach be mothers and women who leave because they can't anymore.
