Our Mothers Influence How We Mother Whether They are With Us or Not

Can I tell you that I haven’t always been content with how my mother communicated with me or her mother (my grandmother) treated me and I am sure they would agree that they haven’t always liked the way I dealt with them. But one thing I have learned through my life’s journey is that they still love me anyway and I still love them just the same. I will admit that part of my struggle with being a mother comes from the influences around me. Life hasn’t been a walk in the park for neither my mother or grandmother, they have their faults and some of those faults rubbed off on me. However, some of their strengths are also a part of my being as well.

When we get to a place when we stop fighting our mothers in hearts and minds and just accept them for who they are we will be able to walk in peace. Acceptance doesn’t mean you are now obligated to break bread with your mother and grandmother and take every feeling you have about them and bury it -- for someone to require you to do that they are not wise. Forgiveness doesn’t come overnight and sometimes forgiving someone has nothing to do with just not liking them. I think many are misguided on the issue of forgiveness but I digress.

Accepting mother and grandmother simply means that you are at peace within concerning them it doesn’t mean you necessarily agree with the things they say and do. You have realized that you are no longer going to fight with them about trying to get them to change anymore whether it is their lifestyle or what they say. The way I see it if you had a mother who was a lesbian, a preacher, a liar, a prostitute, a rock star, or a housekeeper and that was the life she chose as long as it doesn’t come into your home and strangle you, why fight with her? If there is one thing I want in this life for myself and children is to walk in peace. And if having peace means distancing oneself, well then by all means do what you must! Feel free to be who you are and forget about those who try to play psychological games to get you to conform. Acceptance must work on her end, she isn’t trying to change you and you aren’t trying to change her. Worrying about your own life is stressful enough!

Mothers, why bother crying?

Motherhood what does it really mean anyway? Is it a lifestyle? A way of life? An opportunity to give life? Mothers do they instantly love their babies once they are told they are pregnant or do they accept first and love later or never at all? So I have been told some couples should have never had children. They love themselves and their partners more than they love their children. To them the children just got in the way. They raise them because they are required to do so all the while praying that their children become successful enough to move away and visit every now and then. God forbid their children have grandchildren! These selfish parents will reflect back on a time in their lives (most specifically being a parent) when they didn't enjoy parenting. For these parents it was difficult and hindered them from their many dreams they had hoped to accomplish in life.

I admitted in another blog that when I found out about my first pregnancy and all others I was not happy and being a mother was not something I was ready for, but once spiritual teachings got a hold of me subconsciously something was happening I just didn’t know it back in 1997 before the children – the year I received Christ. Trying to apply scripture to my life was challenging enough back then. Furthermore, I had to be responsible for teaching my children too (beginning in 1999 with the first) once they entered the world and I barely understood most of what I read. Biblical principals became clearer to me when I read children’s bible stories. They gave me the inspiration to stand even when I rather just fall. I learned how to pray the kind of prayers only a mother can pray once I had my own children. I didn’t understand before I had children why sometimes my grandmother would just get on her knees and just moan asking God for a number of things many of which I couldn’t understand, but somewhere between her moaning and groaning I heard “son” and “daughter.” Her prayers were getting through to a God who not only listened to grandma’s prayers but acted on them.

Why as mothers do we bother to cry (pray)? It’s not like anyone will listen, right? Wrong! A mother’s cry will get results from the boardroom to the hospital room someone will do what they are told or face the wrath of a mother! She usually has a secret arsenal of ways to get people to do what she asks. If it means writing letters, making phone calls, setting up meetings, organizing groups, or protesting a company, she will do whatever it takes to get justice for her child.

How many times have you heard a son or daughter thank their mother first after accepting an award or opportunity? “If it wasn’t for my mother, I wouldn’t be here… If it wasn’t for my mother pushing us to do…” There is a special power a mother has over her children. She may not get them to do things when she wants them done, but she can get her children to feel. A father can’t get down into the depths of his children’s souls like a mother can! God has gifted mothers to reach a place within their children that others can’t. Once the child can feel the presence of his or her mother, everything else will follow. The bed will get made, the school grades will come up, the bad relationship will end, the negative influences will dissipate, and bodily aches and pains don’t feel so bad. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough mothers who can reach their children in this way, because if they could the world would be a different place. This doesn’t mean that the fathers don’t have any impact on their children, because they do but their role is different from a mothers’ role and as much as we would like to think that both sexes can play one another’s roles that is a lie! God gifted mothers and fathers in different ways. One can’t do without the other no matter how much we would like to reason, substitute, or make excuses.

Written by Nicholl McGuire
http://parentsbabieschildren.blogspot.com

Mothers, Abortion, and Life

What can I say about motherhood? I can tell you that although as a child I didn’t like it nor did I want to be part of it that I grew out of the negative attitude about it temporarily. I did fantasize about having children when I fell in love with my high school sweetheart. I thought about how wonderful it would be to have two little girls that looked like him. However, when that relationship went south the fantasy went away too. I wasn’t interested in being a mother until I started attending church. The possibility became a reality, but did I truly want to be a mother? No. God told me that I would one day become one and when I received that word in my spirit I cried. The tears weren’t happy ones they were sad ones. I knew that to become a mother meant that I was no longer responsible for just me! I didn’t want that duty for the next 18 plus years of my life. However, love-struck me like it did many women and I would drop my defenses and my underwear not caring too much about the “what ifs” of life. What if the father doesn’t stay with me, what if we don’t have enough money to raise the child, what if I become ill and died? No “what if” concept crossed my mind until I later learned that indeed I was pregnant.

Bringing a child into the world is not as wonderful as religion would have you to believe. Some of you mothers reading this know what I am talking about. You see when you are the one carrying the child you aren’t thinking about everything positive and good about this life that is moving and shaking within you. Even worse, some women who are adamant about not having children don’t see “it” as being nothing more than tissue that needs to be removed out of a body that they feel isn’t ready for children. We can argue with one another about what we consider a precious life and what others consider mere tissue, but the reality is that you are a mother whether you choose to accept it or not whether you got rid of the evidence or not. If you aborted a child that didn’t abort the natural process you went through whether you were conscious of it or not at least during the first year (a friend shared her abortion experience with me.) Nor did the abortion stop the memories and the possibilities that creep into a mother’s mind on occasion and the regrets that later follow for many.

I have spoken to women who aborted children and they don’t seem all that happy about their decisions. They all justified their actions by not being ready for a child at the time. But who is ever ready? I was 24 when I had my first child and I wasn’t ready then and later at 34 I wasn’t ready again. Am I judging those who chose to abort? Not at all. I am just reiterating what these “mothers” told me. Were they mothers with cries? You best believe it! They cried for what could have been, what they could have, should have, and wished they had done. Some didn’t cry so much for the child or tissue, but they cried for even putting themselves in such a predicament. They may not have “mothered” a child, but at one time they were a mother.

Written by Nicholl McGuire
http://associatedcontent.com/nichollmcguire

Excerpt from the book: When Mothers Cry Written by Nicholl McGuire

"When mothers cry the first thing people want to know is why? Why would a woman bother to shed tears in front of an audience that would judge, berate, belittle, accuse, lie, or abuse her. Why would any mother allow her tears to fall in the presence of critical, negative, judgmental people who can’t see outside their ignorant boxes they call, “self?” I’ll tell you why because sometimes the only way you can tell a story is to cry. Sometimes the only way you can make your point be known is to raise your arms up in the air and scream! When mothers cry people had better listen! When they take to the streets with picket signs and expressions on their faces that look as if they are ready to kill, people had better worry. The worse thing that any man, childless woman, or rebellious child can do is to add fuel to the fire of a mother who is already enraged about her partner, children, boss, relatives, finances, and more by telling her, “You should…” Listening to someone tell me this while I am in the heat of anger is like nails scratching on chalkboard! "So what should I do?" I feel like telling this know-it-all! Then I brace myself hoping they will not say anything more.

A woman, man, or child who hasn’t walked two steps in someone else’s shoes ought to be quiet! Why open yourself up to a mother telling you off wherever you may stand? Why act as if you know how she feels when the truth of the matter is you don’t. Who has ever felt that rush of heated anger creep from the bottom of your stomach to the top of your head while someone tries to tell you how to raise your children? I know some of you put a critic back in their place without hesitation! They most likely responded with, “I’m sorry!”

We mothers cry for many reasons far too many to get into detail at this moment, but our concerns are valid. We need to vent we have to vent, because if we don’t we will blow up inside or outside and God have mercy on the one that has to hear our stories! He or she may be listening to us for hours ranting and raving about everything that everyone ever did to us and why we will not sit back and allow our children to go through what we did as a child!

I admit I am a mother with a cry and that is why I even bothered to write a book for anyone who can relate to my pain. Notice I said relate not feel because you can’t feel what I feel and most likely if you had the opportunity to live through some of the things I have gone through as a mother you probably wouldn’t have reacted the same way. You see we can say what we would do if a situation arises, but the truth is we don’t know how we would react.

I have witnessed mothers scream and yell at their children in the public hoping that somehow their scolding will shame the children enough that they would do what they are told, but oftentimes it only makes them act worse. Then they wonder why the child attempts to yell back at the mother in frustration. A child will only behave in the way that the parent treats them. Yell at them and watch what you will get --a child with an attitude waiting for an opportunity to tell you about yourself. Call them names and later, if you listen real close, you will hear them call you the same names under their breath. Who was the foolish mother who thought that if she acted mean toward her children she would get loving and kind adult children who would honor her in old age?

There was a time in my life that I had never wanted to be a mother. I didn’t want to have to deal with the responsibilities of caring for a child. I had witnessed too many mothers around me lose their cool with children, including me, so I reasoned that having a child makes you mean and I didn’t want to be a part of anything that was going to make me act like what I had observed mothers do. I saw them scream, push, spank, and cuss their children. I knew that if my mother said she was going to knock my sister and my head off, after upsetting her with our toys and stomping around the house, we had better take heed to what she said. At the time I didn’t know that she couldn’t literally knock our heads off and I didn’t want to find out either."

Nicholl McGuire

Be Encouraged!

When you feel like giving up on everything
When the pain seems too much to bear
When people scandalize your name
When no one seems to care.

When the man you love says goodbye
When your child cries and cries
Don't lose your mind!
Don't hate your life!
Don't kill what you have built!

Stand strong in the face of those who have hurt you
Stand strong when man threatens you
Stand strong when the woman you love lies
Stand strong!

Know that you weren't created to be any one's
physical or verbal punching bag!

You are special!
Your talents exceptional!
Live each day better than the next
and know that it is inevitable that we all will die one day.

Let no one move you to take your own life
through smoking, drinking, drugs and the like.

Let no one move you to take your own life
through starvation, manipulation, and lack of creation.

For there is someone greater than you!
The flowers weren't planted by the man who abuses
the sky wasn't created by the woman who misuses
their minds, bodies and souls!

Don't lose your mind!
Find your heart
know that you have
purpose from the very start!

Written by: Nicholl McGuire