Meeting My Mother Again

I thought I knew my mother.

After all, I had known her my entire life.

But it wasn't until I became a mother myself that I realized I had only ever known one version of her.

The second time I met my mother, I wasn't her daughter anymore.

I met her as another mother.

For most of my life, my mother existed only in relation to me. She was my mom.

The person who made decisions I didn't always understand.

The person I admired, argued with, blamed, leaned on, and sometimes wished had done things differently.

Like many children, I rarely wondered what it had felt like to be her.

Not because I didn't love her, b

ut because children aren't meant to carry their parents' stories. They live inside on their own.

Then I became a mother.

And almost without noticing, something shifted.

For the first time, I wasn't only looking back at my childhood. I was looking across at another woman who had once stood exactly where I was standing now.

Not just my mother. Another mother.

During my son's first year, there were days when I felt completely drained.

Like so many parents, I found myself measuring time in naps, meals, laundry, and bedtime routines. Even with a supportive husband who works from home and steps in whenever I need him, there were evenings when I had nothing left to give.

One day, my mother's story came back to me.

She told me that when I was a baby, my father worked long hours and usually came home late. On weekends, he often left to help his aging parents, while she stayed home alone with me.

This time I didn't hear it as her daughter. 

I heard it as another mother.

Suddenly, the questions changed.

How lonely was she?

Who asked her if she was okay?

Did she ever lie awake wondering whether she was doing enough?

Did she question herself the way I sometimes do?

The story itself hadn't changed. Only the person listening to it had.

Motherhood didn't erase my questions. There are still choices my mother made that I struggle to understand. There are things I would do differently. There are moments that still hurt.

But now those feelings exist alongside something new:

Compassion.

Not because she was perfect. Not because every decision she made was right.

But because I now understand something I couldn't understand before: raising a child asks more of us than anyone can fully prepare us for.

For the first time, I can hold both truths. I can deeply appreciate what my mother carried. And I can still question some of the choices she made.

Perhaps that is one of motherhood's quiet gifts.

It doesn't simply teach us how to raise a child.

It gives us the chance to meet our own mothers again—not as little girls looking up at them, but as women walking a path they once walked before us.

And maybe that second meeting is one of the most meaningful conversations we'll ever have, even if it happens silently, inside our own hearts.

By Natali Ittenberg- For Love & Babes Facilitator