“I don’t say anything but to tell you the truth sometimes I can’t describe the pain, it hurts me bad. But for me it is better that I don’t say anything because I know it would cause confusion and it wouldn’t solve anything. They are my children and I love them but sometimes I does wonder…,” she trailed off and there was a long silence.
This mother of four was speaking about the relationship she has with her young adult children, three of whom are parents themselves. We have been discussing it for a while and at times she cries. I have known her since we were children, but it was only recently she gave me permission to publish some of what we spoke about.
“I know you are not using my name, but I still don’t want too much out there in the public,” she warned me after agreeing.
“It is not as if me and my children does cuss out or anything like that, but it is just how they treat me,” she struggled to explain. “I don’t know if I am a bad mother or anything. I not saying I perfect and I know I didn’t give them the best of life but if I tell them about me life… Man is not like I trying to make a excuse or anything because I don’t want them to feel that way but it hurts…
“I get all a dem for one man, and he was not like a real man so them boys didn’t get that man in they life. And of course I had to leave he. That is another story altogether but let we just say that my marriage was the worst thing that every happen to me. When I look back at it I does want to vomit; that is how it does make me feel. It is not what I wanted, but what was forced on me and I would never forgive my mother for that.
“But I talking about the relationship with me children. I love all a them. But they big now and everybody have to make them own decisions. But you know if I don’t reach out to them like they don’t reach out to me. If I sick I know they would come around, but we don’t have that relationship.
“I don’t play a part in them life. It is not like they would bring the people they with, well none of them not married, and is not like I want to dictate but I would just want to be more… I know it sound confusing, but you have to know it to feel it.”
I understood where the sister was coming from, but I also knew that her children could be carrying their own pain and it may just be how they are dealing with it.
“When me them father separate, well when I decide that I had enough, and I just leave, it was a struggle. And a lot of days I really couldn’t provide for them. I accept that it was not easy, and I know I was the parent and I had to provide for them, but it was not easy,” she told me.
“I had no skills and no education and so I do the next best thing, I get somebody thinking that it would help me, but you know how the story go. I had four children and it is does be hard for a woman with so much children find a man to stay. I work hard with he and try to build life but in the end it didn’t work out.
“From then on is one thing to the next and that husband of mine just lurking like waiting and wishing that I would go back with he, but not me. So it was from one punishment to the next and eventually the two big one lef and went back with them father and because them is boys, them start working and looking after themselves.
“I struggle with the girls. I know I make a lot of mistakes, but I was trying to let them get better than me. I did not finish school, so I was trying for them to finish but it didn’t happen. As I say one thing to the next and none a them went right up to form five in school, that really hurt me,” she added.
“Now them is they own big people making them own children. Everybody on them own and I is still a very young woman because I start making children at a very young age; all was me mother doing. You know I didn’t want to make them same mistakes or I should say I didn’t want to do the same wrong things me mother do, and I try hard, but I made mistakes,” she acknowledged.
“Now I just have to sit down and watch what is happening and hope that one day my children would realize what they are doing wrong. Girl, to be honest I can’t spell it out and sometimes I say I selfish but that can’t stop the pain. I feel the pain. I don’t have nobody right now. For years I have nobody and maybe I lonely. But then again I does enjoy living alone I just want my children to act better…
“But you know, all in all I still thankful that I don’t buse out or so with my children. Well I know if I give the two girls a chance maybe it would get to that but I not going down that road. I done have to deal with my own parents, I not close to none a them, and I don’t want that for me and my children.
“I telling me self that as they get older they would see things differently. For now is like easing and pressing. As much as I can, I not saying nothing and just keeping the peace. I would show love and whatever I can do to help them I am going to do it.
“As parents we just have to love we children as best as we can. I not the world’s best mother but I praying that one day me and my children will have a better relationship. I don’t want you to say it all out there, some things is just for me and you to talk you because sometimes I does just want somebody to talk to.”
We have had many conversations and it is obvious that this sister loves her children. As parents, we will make mistakes, as the saying goes while parenting is the single most important job in this life it is one we never train or study for. We make many mistakes, some of them so damaging that our children can become adults who are bitter and angry and in some cases, unable to function properly. But every day we just have to strive to be a better version of the parent we were yesterday. To all the sisters out there who are struggling with being parents just do your best, the rest will fall into place.
