As the firstborn and only daughter, taking care of others is in my nature. I practically raised my brothers, and as we grew older, I received the dreaded comment, ‘You’re acting like Mom.’
I am currently in the most serious relationship of my life, and before heading off to college together my boyfriend’s mother told me, “Don’t do everything for him.” Yet I am so convinced that acts of service are one of my love languages because I cannot help but do anything and everything for this man. When he’s sick, I turn into the chef, the nurse, literally a mom. I cook him chicken soup from scratch, make sure he’s hydrated, doing all I can. When he is stressing over an exam for class – there I am. Learning a topic I have no knowledge of to help him study, making sure that he is getting all of his work done and not slacking. If he needs help packing, guess who does the most (me), if he has run out of clean socks, the washer is already set to “on.” And you see, you may be reading this and thinking “You do everything for him” or “he’s taking advantage of you,” but you see he doesn’t ask me to do any of this. He is so appreciative of all the things I do and I feel like that just gives me the satisfaction I need of being a nurturer.
Don’t think all of this is sweet things, I also nag like a mother nags. “Go to class,” and “Have you done this yet?” Nagging is not annoying someone to be mean, it is annoying someone to do something that you know is right and will benefit them. You nag because you care, and trust me, my boyfriend and brothers will not deny that I nag them to do many things that could have been avoided if they did it in the first place.
Like I said in the beginning, taking care of others is in my nature. It is something that brings me joy and keeps me sane. When I’m at home for break, I wake up every morning and make sure my baby brother leaves for school with a delicious breakfast and comes home to a warm dinner. I take care of the people I love. So that brings me to my question, is mothering a bad thing? If taking care of others and doing all the things a mom would do for their kid is bad, then the world is not correct. Mothering is showing love.