Mothers and Fathers

Mothers and Fathers

Not because you give birth does not make you a mother and not because you are unable to care for you your child does not make you a bad mother.
Not only because you are a sperm donor, that makes you a father. And just because you are a sperm donor you are a father.

I grew up with my paternal grandmother, aunts and uncles with instruction from my father that if my mother shows up she could visit but she was not allowed to leave with me.
As I get older, I began to wonder why my mother never visit or write when she was living a stone throw away from me.
I started hearing stories of how she visited when I was a wee babe but as per my dad she was not allow to leave with me. However, I was still hurt that she was not in my life. For whatever reason my dad took me to his mom, my mom was angry and decided that she was going to stay out of my life.

Did that make her a bad mother? No, not in itself. When I was fifteen years I was introduced to her and instead of trying to connect with me she tried to destroy the relationship I had with my father. Did this make her a bad mother? As I grew older, it was clear to me that my mother did not love me as she did the others; she had no empathy for me. When I was in my late thirties I went to her to chat, mother to daughter and she started talking about my sisters. I was so hurt I screamed at her, I try to show her how I felt how she made me feel and asked her why she could not accept me just for me. She told me that she had asked God to forgive her and there was nothing she could do for me. That made a bad mother to me! I was hurting at that moment and she did not even try to help.

At this point in my life I did not want anything much from her, just for her to treat me as her child and she could not.
She became a foster mother and was very good at caring for those children, she even asked me for help sometimes (to wash their hair and such).

I have seen many men who took care of children that they did not fathered, and many abandon their own children.

Mothers and fathers are people who are care givers not only to their own flesh and blood children but to all children who are in need.
If you adopt a child and you love them, you are a parent, (mother/father), if you show love to your neighbor’s children you are a mother/father. I have three children, my youngest is twenty eight years old, and still today their schoolmates still calls me mom whenever they meet me in the street.

We could all be mothers and fathers, it’s in us but like a seed that is planted, it we don’t water it, it will not grow. It is up to us to take the gift that the Lord gave us and nurture.

Circumstances may come up and interferes with the natural order of life, but we have to decide who we are and what we want for ourselves and our children.