Prayer, Sacrifice, Love

The things that sustain us throughout this journey are the same essential staples that we instil in our kids from birth. Prayer, Sacrifice, Love. They didn’t ask us to have them, as we are often told, or to commit to them. We choose to. If their affections are returned (and hopefully they are) we count ourselves as blessed.

For us to survive these stages, there must be a beacon of light that guides our way. For me, this light has been my relationship with Our Lady and what she represents - Stability. Hope. Patience. Endurance.

Humility. Endless Love.

As Mary did, there are many times where we are silent as we ponder and keep life’s unbearable tragedies in our hearts. At other times however, we have had to speak up and out, shaping and moulding our children, pruning and trimming the rough edges of rebellion, rudeness, their insecurities and doubts.

This is our duty. They may not have chosen us, but God certainly choose us, for them.

Motherhood teaches you to harness the energies of unconditional love, to nurture and to endure. In the darkest moments of our lives, when we are bombarded by disappointment, failure, mistrust, and we are losing hope, we must begin the process of exfoliation, that is, by hard work, getting rid of these negative externals and instead, clothe ourselves with Mary’s characteristics, breathing in the constants that she embraces.

As I write this, I think of mothers that I know: a 28-year-old who can neither read nor write, yet struggles valiantly to care for her six children; Margaret Kistow who has mothered more than 100 orphaned and abandoned children; those who travel thousands of miles to rescue their children from despair; my grandmother Emelda who held parties for children in Laventille in her small home; my mother Rita who raised seven of us to be independent and vocal, despite many challenges. And the words reverberate in my head: Prayer. Sacrifice. Love. As they did, we nurture our children as we have been nurtured. We love as we are taught to love.

Mothers lead by example. As we celebrate those women in our lives who have mothered us, whether they are our birth mothers or those who have been our primary care givers, our celebrations will be largely based on our individual experiences and definitions of what motherhood means to us.

It is not uncommon for us to believe that all mothers should be warm, affectionate and caring, yet some of us have mental and emotional scars from those instances where our care givers failed to nurture and appropriately care for us as children.

The ability to manage these challenges successfully necessitates that we practise self-care and heal our inner pain, so that a generational cycle of instability, conflict and imbalance does not recur.

St Teresa of Kolkata once said that if we ever feel distressed to call upon Our Lady and say this simple prayer, “Mary, Mother of Jesus, please be a mother to me now.” As mothers, sometimes we may not get it right, especially as we want to do it “better” than our mothers did, but the accomplishment is in getting up and trying again.

So Happy Mothers’ Day to all of you who continue to inspire, motivate and remind us to be better, every day, every moment of our lives.

Ora pro nobis, Mater Dei.

* Margaret Nakhid-Chatoor is a mother of four young adults, and mother-in-law of one.