Happy Mother’s Day: My Reflections as i wrap up my 3rd year of motherhood

3 years ago today, the promise of God emerged from my womb at 1:41 am: Darryl Grayson Howell. Mother’s day really means nothing to me outside of celebrating my own mom. This day is Mother’s day for me. Becoming a mom has radicalized me in a way that I am grateful and it has saved my life. When I gave birth to my son, I gave birth to my voice. I began speaking up for myself. So, for my baby’s 3rd birthday, I present my gift to the world: my writing.

WELCOME TO 1ST AND LYNN, MY OWN LITTLE CORNER IN MY OWN LITTLE CHAIR :)

It’s time for us to have a tough conversation. Wanna know why the gender war is raging??? Sure, the algorithm’s got us regurgitating talking points, but the algorithm is a reflection of the exact problem with the world today: NARCISSISM.

We are in a narcissism crisis and historically, the narcissist is usually envisioned as a man, and that’s partially because the person the name is derived from (Narcissus) is a man; however, women are notoriously narcissistic. We see the girl narcissist burst at the seems on the birthday trips, during disagreements, or when it’s time to celebrate someone other than themselves and it’s time to talk about it.

Sure, “men aren’t accountable,” but who am I kidding? Neither are women. I think of all my former fave “accountability queens” and they have been notoriously unaccountable and hella unkind. So, who goes first in the accountability olympics? I argue that we (women) should.

This is my personal psalm and its theme surrounds how women fail one another. There is a conversation, largely untapped, around women and the ways mean girl behavior has eroded communal systems of girlhood. Women, like me, are afraid/hesitant to be friends with other women. At what point do we ask “wtf is going on with us?”

Sure, we can blame the patriarchy, but how should the matriarchy respond? How can women be accountable to men when we are not accountable to one another? If there is a visible end to the gender war, I hope to be at the forefront of the conversation. I argue that by (re)connecting woman with her identity as mother—regardless of if she has a womb or not, kids or not—is the panacea to our social ills.

Here is my first submission, or moreover a plea, in what I hope to be the thing that is “the shot heard ‘round the world.”

I hope it’s readable. At least much more than this intro was lol. Thank you for reading and enjoy :)

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I’ve lived enough life and helped raise enough of other folks’ kids to know that being a mother is about what you can bring forth in others more than it is about physical or biological motherhood. Mothers nurture, cultivate, discern, and push humanity forward—this is the life we give. Society’s pervasive need for motherhood requires that we show up, also, as aunts, grandmas, sisters, cousins, and friends.

I am privileged to be born into a legacy of great mothers—Regina Gray and Jerlen Gray, my mother and paternal grandmother. These women are/were Proverbs 31 women—women of God, prayer, enterprise and ultimately service-oriented. I carry this posture of care into my relationships with people and I serve them from that place. So, I’m reminded of a grief that exists when I look up and find myself alone, abandoned, and mishandled in the same places where (and by the same faces whom) I mothered. It is a devastating disappointment and one I am all too accustomed to.

There is no one way to grieve your “mom issues.” People mourn mothers who died, mothers who left, mothers who stayed but were never emotionally present, mothers who did their best and still caused harm, mothers they never got to become, babies they never got to raise, and relationships they thought would feel more nurturing than they do.

This year, I find myself grieving the mothers I thought I had—mother figures, spiritual mothers, big sisters, and grieving mothers I supported. Play Aunties who aint show up for me when it was time. The women who knew what it meant to receive tenderness yet did not offer tenderness back. The women who let me be a safe place for them, and a black hole for me when I needed a place to land. Hell, I just found out on the phone that a woman I considered a mother was dogging me at my wedding. That sort of betrayal, abandonment, and overall letdown is destabilizing for someone who has a fear of needing people and thus being disappointed.

Moms who I admired/respected who for no other reason than a trick of the enemy morphed into my foes. It’s a certain break you experience in being victimized by mothers you admired/loved/mothered.

Women like me don’t only lose our babies or husbands. We lose the community we thought would surround us (who bore witness and vowed to at least), and we lose the fantasy of being cared about and for by women we care for. Coming through loss and grief, I realize that shared pain does not always produce shared maturity. Some people know how to receive mothering, but they do not know how to give it, and sometimes they refuse to learn how. There are people who demand to drink from your well rather than figure out how to become water in order to be a well for you and that is grief too. Realizing some people just do not have it or they just won’t give it to you is tough either way. Accept that—it’s what the serenity prayer encourages us to do.

I have had to grieve the relationship I thought I would have with these women, especially my mother-in-law. My own mother did her very best and with humility allowed me to seek out relationships with women to get what I was looking for, knowing that it did not all have to be found in her. I was constantly rejected or placed in constant battles for power. Perhaps they were rejecting themselves or felt powerless in other areas in life? That’s a reflection for another day.

Maternal rejection in this context is when women who you are in intimate relationship with reject you by doing some sort of thing that you perceive as harmful/hurtful. This sort of grief is tender because it is not just about a person and what they did to you, but the ways that it shatters the security of the relationship and picture you had in your mind. It is about grieving the hope thinking there would be another maternal presence who understood the sacredness of what it means to become a wife, a mother, a woman carrying so much at once.

I am grieving the gap between the relationship I imagined and the relationship that currently exists and it hurts. That’s ok. When you become a mother, you need advice, covering, and humility around you. You need women who know when to step in and when to step back. You need people who understand that helping is not the same as controlling, that presence is not the same as pressure, and that being older does not automatically make someone emotionally safe.

There is a culture of maternal disappointment that many people are afraid to name and for a long time, so was I. I did not know how to express my “mom issues” and hold mothers accountable without sounding like I was bashing my own mom. We are often taught to honor mothers publicly while suffering under the weight of them privately. We are told, “That’s just how she is,” as if dysfunction morphs into the sacred once it has repeated itself long enough. We are taught to excuse emotional immaturity because someone gave birth, raised children, helped somebody survive, or carried pain of their own.

For some time, moms have carried tremendous pain by being under-supported, unseen, overworked, betrayed, abandoned, and expected to nurture from places that were never nurtured in them. Many mothers were handed children before they had language for their own wounds, and some became mothers while still needing mothering. I think our reality deserves compassion, but compassion cannot be where accountability goes to die. We can honor mothers without idolizing motherhood, acknowledge sacrifice without ignoring harm, and have empathy for what shaped a woman without pretending her resulting behavior did not shape us. Motherhood is sacred, but it is not a shield from reflection. We gotta be accountable.

Maternal disappointment comes from any woman who occupies a maternal space in our lives and then mishandles the responsibility that space requires.

It’s the auntie who made you feel small, or the church mother who harshly corrected you and made you feel judged.
The mentor who only loved you when you needed her or when it was time to exploit you, or the grieving mother who let you hold her pain but disappeared when yours arrived. It’s the mother-in-law who refused a safe space. The woman who called herself family but abandoned when it was time to show up.

These disappointments cut so deep because they often come without clean endings. Nobody died, but something did and you mourn what you thought it would be, who you thought they were, and the version of yourself that kept hoping this time would be different. You mourn the child in you, the woman in you, and sometimes the mother in you who needed support and instead got silence, competition, control, dismissal, or distance.

This is a quiet grief, but it is indeed far from small and lives in your body. A grief that shows up when the world celebrates a role that has been both beautiful and bruising in your life. A grief that surfaces when you are trying to be a healthy mother while still recovering from unhealthy dynamics around you. And yet, I do not want to write this as an indictment but an invitation for repair ❤️

Repair happens where humility, a commitment to truth, and changed behavior is. Repair begins when a mother or mother figure can say:

“I did not realize how that affected you.”
“I may have meant well, but I still hurt you.”
“I want to understand what felt unsafe.”
“I do not want to repeat what harmed me.”
“I am willing to listen without defending myself first.”

Most importantly, repair asks something of those of us who have been disappointed. Openess. Repair asks us to tell the truth without making bitterness our home and it requires that we grieve what is missing without becoming permanently defined by its absence. In order for us to repair, we must release the fantasy version of people so that we can deal honestly with who they are. One of the biggest things we learn in repair is that we stop auditioning for care from people who have shown us they do not currently have the capacity to give it.

I am learning that I can honor what I need without begging unsafe people to provide it.

So, in memory of the griefs of motherhood, I choose to remember all the forms of mothering I have grieved and I remember them because grief deserves a witness; however, I also make room for truth, accountability, and softer conversations. I make room for mothers to become more than what wounded them and for daughters to stop pretending they are fine just because it’s their mama lol.

If we are brave enough, this witness can also become a doorway into real repair that starts with truth and grows through humility. The kind of humility where we admit that motherhood is sacred, but sacred things still need tending. Especially moms. We owe it to our sisters, and most of all we owe it to ourselves.

I love you.

-Lynn

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEARSKI!!!! 🐻❤️

Mama love her baby! I hope I made you proud!

1st & Lynn