I’m in my nineteenth year of a precious, complicated, wonderful gift—a gift I’m just beginning to understand and still learning to say “thank you” for. The gift is my mother, it’s being her daughter. It’s having her as my life force, my nature and my nurture. She is the gift, and I don’t know if anyone has ever called her that before. I certainly haven’t. But now, in the midst of a liberal-arts-induced introspective episode, I’m realizing that so many of the things I’ve come to love about myself have their roots in her. This goes without saying, but I’m not me without her. I want to talk about the way my mother raised me, and how these early lessons manifest themselves in who I am today, particularly as a woman and as a feminist.Some of the lessons my mother impressed upon me, but the lessons I treasure most were never communicated in words. I often don’t know whether to think of motherhood as a magic or as a minefield, but I know that there is a magic in this. It’s imperfect, it doesn’t always make sense, and I’m not sure if it’s even conscious, but I believe there are a silent exchanges of information that happen between a parent and a child. There are messages that shape us and grow with us over long stretches of time that can take decades to even recognize, and require no words at all. These, to me, are the most precious gifts. I think that if my mother had put these lessons into words, it might’ve interfered with the magic. It might’ve turned them into mantras that I would learn to regurgitate, instead of the deeply personal truths that I am growing into and making my own.
I have the type of mother that never had any qualms about walking around the house in her birthday suit. I think this is pretty typical for mother-daughter relationships, and perhaps it’s also pretty typical that it has, at times, embarrassed me or made me uncomfortable. But today, I just feel gratitude. Thinking about this has even brought me to tears, as crazy as that sounds. My mother doesn’t operate behind closed doors, and it’s because she has nothing to hide. I want to say thank you for the way my mother wore, has always worn, and still wears her body in front of me. The way she uses her body, the way she exists in her body, the way she takes care of her body. She has never hesitated to bend, scratch, stretch, sleep, or inspect, all while in the nude. She didn’t shoo me out of the bathroom, lock her door, or hide herself away. It didn’t teach me to disregard the privacy of others, it taught me to respect my body, to not feel ashamed of my body, and to take special care of my body. It taught me that women have hair, stretch marks, fat, wrinkles, you name it—and that it’s okay. It’s wonderful, even.My mother never policed my wardrobe. I think this is where I might lose most parents, the ones that mind their daughter’s necklines, their skirt lengths, when they pierce their ears and they shave their legs and they start wearing makeup. These things didn’t matter much at all to her. Which is probably a risk, an example of laissez-faire parenting that could go wrong in a lot of ways. But, ultimately it taught me: my body, my choice. By the time I was four, she stopped dressing me for school. She embodies a key message from Bambi: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” The only time she ever comments on my appearance without being asked has been to compliment. She wanted me to feel confident in my own skin, to wear what I felt good in, to express myself how I saw fit. I was allowed to wear the most ridiculous outfits my preschool mind could imagine, and she didn’t even make me brush my hair if I didn’t want to. Careless, or careful? It has made me an independent free-thinker that is comfortable not conforming to someone else’s idea of femininity, and for that, I am so grateful.My mother the tomboy, the introvert, the All American swimmer. Reading this article would make her cry. Most things make her cry. And so marks yet another lesson: embrace emotion, let it move through your body, and don’t let anyone tell you that big girls don’t cry.
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