We Stopped Mothering Each Other

In my life, I tend to draw in + attract the unmothered.

I don’t mean that in a negative way + I most certainly do not mean that those who are drawn to me had mothers who were bad. Well, some were. Most were doing the very best they could with what they had, the way mine did, as a barely twenty-year-old + figuring it out using me as the test subject.

What I mean is nobody was soft with them. Nobody handled them with intention + care. Nobody was a safe space. Wasn’t their keeper. What they got instead was raised, fed, kept alive + sent to school. They didn’t get held or nurtured.

Over time I have come to believe that is why I keep getting called into people’s lives. Not because of the credentials or experience, but to ease that part of them because I recognize that wound down to my soul.

How to Recognize the Unmothered

The unmothered usually are the most competent people in the room. The most observant of the people around them.

They handle things. Anticipate needs. They are usually the ones everybody calls when something breaks + they never call anybody in return if they need something. They figure it out. Move forward + keep pushing.

A lot of times they are the first to apologize for taking up time. They will minimize what happened to them. Tell you a full story of the worst things that they have lived through + experienced with a straight face + flat voice. All of this with maybe a small laugh at the end, because at some point in their journey they learned that having big feelings in front of somebody can make that person feel uncomfortable, + making people feel uncomfortable is not safe.

More often than not, they are very successful. That’s the common mask they wear to hide what’s underneath is all.

What We Traded It For

Honestly, we did this on purpose + mostly for good reason, which is what makes it hard to talk about or say out loud.

We wanted our independence. To not have to need anybody because historically needing people also meant being trapped by them. Entangled, intertwined + indebted. Women in particular have always had an extremely good reason to say no to arrangements where care was compulsory, unpaid + inescapable.

So collectively we built up the walls + created lives where nobody has to depend on anybody. And you know what? It worked. We were set free.

We also created our own box that has left us feeling isolated + alone.

Community used to be a real thing, not just a buzzword. It used to be the delivery mechanism + driving force for this kind of care. Not because people were nicer back then either. It was because they were physically near each other + their survival was intertwined together, so somebody did take notice if you went quiet. Proximity was the magic key + did the work without effort.

Today, we do not have that proximity as easily anymore. Not in the way it was before + we never replaced it with anything. All we did was assume care would keep on happening on its own, + the reality is that’s not how that works, because it never happened on its own. It happened because people were close enough to see + witness each other.

The Tenderness Part

Community is missing, but more so it is the tenderness that community created that feels lost.

As a whole we got hard. Yep, all of us. The way we talk to each other now treats gentleness as something that is foreign. Boundaries have become a weapon, a term we use for cutting people off without another term for how we go back + repair what may need support.

Every part of it started as a way of protection. Somebody’s real + valid response to being hurt.

The cost of all that protection + armor is we no longer can be soft with each other, even when we want to be. We have forgotten how + now it’s no longer in our hands.

Truth Moment? I truly think that more people would take care of each other if they knew what taking care of someone looked like. For most, they have never seen it done. Not genuinely anyway.

A lot of what I do is mothering. In the birthing room, I’m holding hands, reminding her of her strength + caring for a woman who is in the biggest transition of her life. More times than not I have had a birthing momma snuggle into me when she was worried + scared. Every single time, afterwards the response has always been the same, “I truly needed you there, I couldn’t have done this without you.” People are longing for the softness. The gentleness of a mom.

What I Actually Watched Happen

A couple of months ago I was getting ready to travel internationally by myself for the first time, + there were two truths. I could not make it work with what I had + I would NOT have asked a single person for help. My people showed up anyway. Luggage, noise cancelling headphones, sleep aid that somebody drove across town to several stores to find.

Not a one of them was asked. They just witnessed me. They heard something true when they asked me how I was doing. I was HONEST.

So no, I do not think tenderness is gone. I think it’s just below the surface, dormant. I think it is sitting inside people waiting for an invitation, only the invitation isn’t coming because we keep telling each other that we are fine.

That, my friends, is a small problem in the grand scheme. It’s also a hard problem, because it does mean that the thing that is standing between us + each other is not culture or capitalism or the way we live now.

It’s legitimately the word fine.

What I Am Naming

I’m not here to hand you a practice. There is no five-step program. I just want to name this because I don’t think we have ever named it.

We stopped mothering each other, very simply. Not out of anger or cruelty. This is out of distance, out of exhaustion + out of a very reasonable desire to not be swallowed up by other people’s needs. In the mix of it all we lost the very thing that was actually holding us up.

Most of the people you know are unmothered. I bet they are actually some of the strongest people you know.

That is the whole thing. Recognizing where we were + where we are going.

XO

Denawa Deniece