5 Things You Learn From Being Raised By A Strong Mother

Why… hello there! I know… I know… I have been missing in action lately and nothing comes close to the guilt of leaving you guys on the tip of your toes, waiting for a new article and then post nothing. I am sorry if I have hurt your feelings and I will [try] work hard to build back the trust. The thing is… I hate not having something of substance to share. I feel the same way Adele did when she was recording 21 and she thought she didn’t have THAT song... You know… The one she could connect to people through, the one that make you feel like you got punched in the gut and have a full blown meltdown in the middle of your Wholefood, in the icecram/dairy aisle. I am all about emotions and as a blogger, I am very much like Adele in a sense that I need to write something my audience can identify with. And unless I can do that, I do not have the courage to show up on my platform. I am not the platonic kind. Sorry… phew… okay I feel better. We’re cool now… so.. now that I got that out of the way, let’s dive into the topic of the day: Parenthood from a child perspective. Hopefully there will be more upcoming articles (Hopefully) about that topic which I find quite interesting.

Yeah I know... I was a bit on the heavy side circa 1990s'

As children, we most of the time find our parents annoying when we are not actually trying to get over the embarrassment we think they are for us. We are so used to this train of thoughts that we undervalue the things they have brought into our lives and the values they have passed onto us; values that are being acclaimed because of how awesome and respectable adults they have made us. So today I want to talk about what it was like for me to be raised by a strong mother and what a huge difference it has made into my life. Just FYI, my parents are [very happily] still married [celebrated their 30 yrs anniversary this year] but for the purpose of this article, I am focusing primarily on what I have learned being raised by a strong mother. So without further due, here are the five most important lessons you learn [from my perspective] from being raised by a strong mother.

1-      You don’t take shit from anybody

As a strong woman, my mom has never been the kind of woman to let people walk all over her. She wouldn’t take shit from anybody and if you did something wrong, she would call you on your shit at the very moment. Being a young woman with brain and moxie is difficult but being in a male dominated field is even more difficult. And sometimes people are not very nice, whether it is in the workplace or in real life. Being able to call people on their bs and not take trash being thrown at me has definitely given me the ability to build my confidence and distinguish myself from the crowd. And I am forever grateful for that. Thank you mama ❤

2-      You learn what unconditional love is

Nothing was never too much for my mother: she always gave her best and did her best, giving to each one of her child pieces of herself for us to be whole. And She has instilled that sense of sacrifice in me. It is true that I sometimes come as closed off, unexpressive emotionally but just because I don’t express my love doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. I feel it deeply and for the people I love and care about, I would do anything; Anything to make them happy, to ensure that they know they are being loved by pouring my love and t happiness into their lives. I give without expecting anything because by watching my mother do it for me, I have understood that it’s what you do when you love people: you give without expecting anything in return.

3-      You have the capacity / potential to do anything you put your mind to

My mother is my superhero. She could handle any situation and up to this day it still blows my mind. If my mother is onto something I can’t handle on my own, I am 99.9% convinced it’s going to be solved. And I have grown up to be that woman too. Being raised by a strong mother, I have learned to not wait around for somebody to do something for me or save me: I get sh*t done myself and make myself the heroine of my story. I have also learned that the only limit to being the best version of myself and achieve great things in life is my own mind/ beliefs. Why? Because I have seen my mother do it all and big and it made me understand that I have all I need within me to do the same thing.  All I have to do is believe in myself,  tap into those unexploited resources within me to make great things happen.

4-      You can be strong and soft

There is no contradiction here. My mother is a strong woman but she has a soft side. We are so used to that mindset of picking  one or the other that at some point I was confused too. Growing up strong I had that misconception that being soft was a weakness even though, socially, it is more acceptable for a woman to be soft than for a man. But looking up to my mother, I finally got comfortable with the idea that I didn’t have to act like (or be) Superwoman all the time and be strong 24/7. I got comfortable with the idea that I was entitled to feel any type of way I wanted and that it was okay to be in touch with my feminine side, it was okay to be soft (sometimes).

5-      You learn to have faith

In God first and in yourself, trusting that no matter how bad things seem to be, it will all work out in the end and everything will be fine.

Loving Without Expectations Or The Art Of Being Happy In Relationships

Welcome back to your favorite happy place for another article. Today we are going to talk about Love. I know what you are thinking ...

Yeaaaah... I knoooowww... I'll make it quick and as painless as I can. So grab yourself a chair or lay down on the Sofa like we do when we pay hundreds of $ to talk to a psychologist who only cuts us off occasionally to say: "you have some really deep issues"... okay... Thanks I guess... 

Make yourself comfy and let's dive in right away. Let’s talk about love and its implications [told and untold] that one minute drive us crazy about the people we are in a relationship with only to leave us filled with anxiety and on the verge of a panic attack the next one.

Love is a beautiful thing. It is an amazing feeling [when you can actually feel it…] to have. For all the times I didn’t really have a chance to fully embrace it or dive into it without feeling hurt, I still chose to cherish the greatness and happiness I got from briefly waving it “hi” instead of reminiscing/ reliving the hurt I got from it. I chose not to turn into that cynical friend you dread to be around… You know... The one who can’t help but throw some shades at your love story and your new beau, narrating you his/her version of “1000 ways to get your heart broken” or “10 steps to getting your heart in pieces”. No… I turned into the sarcastic one with the naïve smile and the occasional smirk on her face, the one that will pretend she isn’t hurt when in fact she very much is but would rather wait to get home and cry herself to sleep because she doesn't deal well with letting the world see her misery. Yes.. THAT friend... I do believe in love, I do believe it is beautiful but I don’t believe that love is all pink and beautiful and that it is all we see in the movies.

Love is not always that romantic comedy that makes us break in tears happy and wish for a happily ever after. This is not the reality of love. The reality of love is what happens when all the hormones settle down and your haziness from being high on dopamine starts to dissipate. It is what happens when you go back to normal [whatever that means 😒] and that you go from being high for days to having your wings cut. It is that sudden anxiety that you feel when you realize you are free falling and about to crash but you hope you won’t because "in theory" your significant other should be there to catch you. And sometimes they are and it is wonderful! But sometimes they don’t and nothing comes close to the hurt you experience at that moment. It is devastating… And though the pain you might experience could be anywhere similar to being punched in the gut and the balls at the same time [for months until you finally move on], some of us are able to walk away with minor emotional trauma that resolves within days, weeks, months (depending on the individual) and a slightly bruised ego, while some other just land in the ER, in a non reactive coma. Been there many times, occasionally waking up from my emotional coma, only to ask myself how was it possible for a human being to suffer that much pain over and over again… The answer to my question came when I stopped jumping from one relationship to another in hope that it will mend my broken heart, and started focusing on what was happening inside of me.

I understood that love didn’t put me there. Love is a dangerous beautiful thing. It is the expectations we carry and impose to the person we are about to start that emotional journey with that beat us to death, before hijacking the parachute and tricking us to jump off the plane; and next thing you know, you are crashing on the concrete. Sounds scary huh? That’s because it is scary. The moment you crash is the moment the frustrations hit, the arguments, the cold shoulder and/ or sometimes the cold war and God forbid you are a child stuck in the middle of all this chaos. Your stake on love will forever be altered and good luck being an emotionally stable human being again.

As I was in emotional rehab working on myself by myself for myself, the only question that was on my mind was: how can I possibly prevent this from happening again? And if it ever happens, how do I minimize the casualties should I do one or more rounds of this bittersweet suffering? I asked myself this question because I knew that if I kept on doing what I was doing I would turn into your cynical friend I mentioned earlier who you grew tired off and eventually unfriended on Facebook, blocked on Snapchat, Whatsapp, Viber, Imo, and also IRL. I didn’t want that to happen to me. I didn’t want to be that type of person. And to my question, some people’s answer was to build walls around my heart to protect it. In theory it works great but in reality, you confine yourself in a very lonely place emotionally and while you are protecting yourself from being hurt, you are also protecting yourself from being happy.  And who wants to live a safe but unhappy life? Maybe some people do but I didn’t.

My epiphany about how expectations could ruin everything before things even started led me to learn how to walk into relationships without expectations; and if this was impossible, helped me keep them very minimal. I have learned not to expect the good nights and good morning calls/ texts and the fluffy stuff that came with being in a relationship. And when my heart was too wild and loving beyond reason, I learned to not expect too much because I couldn’t sustain the hurt and pain that came with being disappointed. I tend to have very high expectations for myself and as a human being, I most of the time fail to hold them, hence disappointing myself at many occasion. So if I can’t hold these expectations, why do I expect somebody to hold them? I have learned to not expect somebody to fix me, mend my broken heart, cure my debilitating loneliness, fill the void I experience more than I would ever like to acknowledge or be my hero and save me from the monsters of my past that more than once have come back to haunt me. I don’t expect somebody to be my everything and I don’t expect somebody to make me his/her everything because the amount of pressure and the unrealistic expectations that come with it are untold of and highly unrealistic! And it wouldn’t be fair to put somebody through that because this is not their job!

The most important thing when it comes to expectations is to not expect somebody to love you when they actually don’t and no matter how hard it is to love someone without being love in return, you have to accept it. Learning to be happy in a relationship starts with being happy alone and this calls to your ability to be self-reliant and to look within yourself for all those things you are seeking through a relationship. It starts with your ability to be independent and keep your expectations from your Significant other non-existent or, at best, minimal because you know that all you need lies within you.

Don’t wait for somebody to make you smile, be happy or give you validation: do it yourself, create your own happiness. Don’t wait for somebody to be your hero: be your own hero, write your own story. There is a power that stems from the ability to be self-reliant and fuels your desire to be happy in a relationship that can only be reached once you have mastered the art of expecting nothing. And until you learn how to do that, being happy will remain nothing but a foreign concept which you will never be able to fully grasp.