LIFE STARTS WITHIN HER "MOTHER"
Our mothers are no doubt the most significant women in our lives. She gave birth to us and endured so much pain during the birthing process, breastfed us, raised us and loved us regardless of how many times we upset, disappointed or made her angry. The years of mistreatment that we’ve given our mothers would never be tolerated by anybody else but masha’Allah, Allah gave her never-ending mercy. Our mothers are gentle, kind, loving, caring, strong, tough, motivating and passionate towards their children. Have you ever seen anyone with such a mixture of attributes?
Sadly, at times we don’t appreciate her efforts. For example, we may mistake her pushing us to do well educationally as her being mean or harsh against you. Not appreciating our mothers efforts can turn the mother-daughter relationship completely upside down. Especially during teenage years. The letter below describes what many sisters are feeling:
As Salamualeikom,
When I was a teenager, I never had a good relationship with my mom. She came here when she was a lot older and she came with a different set of morals and standards. She’s never understood how hard it is for me to grow up as a Muslim female in this society so I tried to do everything right by listening to her but at the same time I just wanted to be a normal teenager.
When my mom was younger, she was not a practicing Muslim and she’s done a lot worse than I have. I understand that she wouldn’t want me to make the same mistakes as her but, when I make the smallest mistake she gets extremely upset. Those mistakes are nothing compared to hers.
There were times that I was a very bad daughter. I would shout and argue, lie to her and sneak off to go to bad places. I regret them now but, the way my mom would deal with it was to threaten to send me back home, say she hated me and never give me affection. The day she told me that she hated me, I completely lost all faith in her. She says she told me that because she wanted me to be stronger but I don’t believe that would make me stronger. It just made my self-esteem go down. She prefers my brothers to me, she never pushes them as much as she does with me. I try so hard at school, home and I have friends that she likes but she never seems pleased or proud of me. I just want her to be proud of me.
When I’m at my friends houses, they’re so nice with their moms. They can kiss them, hug them, talk with them about anything but I can’t with my mom. I only talk to her when she needs something or to inform her about something. I barely hug or kiss her. I spent time away from home on holiday and when I called her, we never had a decent conversation. I try but it doesn’t work.
I’m getting to the age where I’m probably going to get married within a few years and I desperately want to build a relationship with my mother before I leave home. How can I considering that we’ve had so many problems in the past?
Reading this broke my heart into little pieces that I almost cried. When moving on from the teenage years, it’s so hard to move on from the hurt, lies, trials and pain that were involved in our relationships with our mothers. The sister’s relationship with her mother is a classic example of the relationship’s that most young women are having with their mothers. A lot of us aren’t from the West so our mothers came from their home countries with a totally different upbringing than expected here in the West. With that upbringing comes a different set of ideas about parenting. Being a introvert, I’ve noticed that it’s perfectly normal for a mother to not be too ‘lovey-dovey’ with their daughters as people tend to assume that it makes the daughter too soft, weak and unable to protect herself. women are expected to be tough so how will she become tough if she’s cuddled and kissed all of the time? What we need to do as daughters, is to realise that all that our mothers are doing is trying to raise us how they, were raised. At times, it may be wrong, but just be patient with her.
A very important thing to do is to talk. Talk! Sit down, talk to your mother about everything. Your worries, troubles and open up to her about what you feel is wrong with your relationship. You won’t move on from the past if you don’t talk about it to your mother so, move on by talking! Be honest, there’s no point in holding back. Encourage her to be honest too. Ask her what she expects of you, what she’s seen from you so far and make suggestions together about things that’ll build your relationship. Maybe it could be to spend time alone once a week and just have a cup of tea and talk, or maybe even therapy sessions. Involving your mother will be the best thing in order to fix your relationship.If you can, get another family member on board. Your father, brother, uncle, sister or aunt could be the unbiased mediator between the conflicts and would be the one to lay out wrong or right. Both we and our mothers can be a bit hotheaded in arguments and think that we’re right when we’re not, so getting someone to put you in your place will help to address where you and your mother are going wrong in your relationship. Believe it or not, our mothers are in the wrong at times so, hopefully that mediator will help her to realise it!
We’ll always be babies to our mother, regardless of how many children we have ourselves, whether we’re married, in university or just finished school. She knows that you’re growing but, she doesn’t want the child that she, nobody else, carried for 9 months to be hurt. Especially when she’s made mistakes of her own. Don’t be silly enough to know that she’s made mistakes and to not learn from them. It’s not worth making those same mistakes yourself. Your mother is an oyster of wisdom so everything she’s keeping you away from is for your own good. Not hers.
I hope the sister does patch up things with her mother, they both deserve to.
May Allah give our mothers the highest station of Jannah. May they be successes in this life and in the Hereafter, give them happiness, love, joy and peace and allow them to see their children the way she envisioned and hoped for them. May Allah give all of our dead mothers Jannah. May He make their graves wide, fill them with light, forgive them, be gentle and merciful on our mothers and give them the best. May Allah do the same for when our alive mothers die. Ameen.
You are right about this one...May we realise our shortcomings...AAMEEN.
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