Yesterday, I was at a women’s gathering. All women attending were mothers, and as mothers, the conversation revolved around their children. It staggered me the amount of co-dependency those women suffer.
From a mother who wanted to request a day off work because her son who goes to school in another city is coming home for the weekend. To a mother who declined an invitation to a dinner party at a friend’s house because her son who’s been on a business trip for weeks was coming home, and she wanted to spend the days before he comes cooking his favourite food.
The common thing they all talked about was that feeling of guilt that never goes away, and the feeling that they haven’t done enough. The sad thing is they think that by doing this they are “good mothers” and what is even more sad still is that they are completely oblivious to society’s programming to women. That programming that turns women into co-dependent beings who don’t have an independent, separate self from others, from those they are associated with, whether it be their husbands, their parents, or their children.
I remember watching a video of Dr. Gabor Mate in which he was talking about how people who are caregivers, or mothers, or those who work in fields where they serve others. Studies have shown that their tendency to sacrifice themselves for others causes their demise. That tendency of pleasing everybody else at their own expense. And how a lot of them end up having cancer and even when they do have cancer, they deny themselves the “privilege” of putting themselves first.
I felt really angry when I told one of them, “You can’t make life revolve around your children. Your children are not your life. They are a very important part of it, but they are NOT your whole life. Dear, go have a life. A life apart from your children.” she answered, “What kind of life? The organization I work at isn’t my life?” I was really stunned as if there was no life beyond work and children. As if there’s nothing new to learn in life. No new places to go? No new hobbies to learn? No life beyond the limited, confined boundaries she created for herself: work, and children! how sad!
I am always shocked when I meet women with great potential, women who have A LOT, really a lot to offer to the world, and they choose to limit themselves, to play small, to settle for a life way less than they are worthy of, all because of the way they were raised up, the way they were programmed, and what is even worse than the programming is their inability to think twice, to question that programming.
I believe it is so unfair both for those women and for the world that is deprived of what they can offer. It is indeed a waste of resources. I always imagine those women meeting God one day and He asks them, “I gave you all those talents, what did you do with them? You used them only for your children? If I wanted you to use them only for your children, I would’ve created you with limited resources, but I created you smart, educated, with a lot of talents that you can use to serve the world and you chose to limit that only for your children?”
I wonder what those women would say. What would they answer to God?
To all talented, smart, well-educated, multi-talented women out there, please think how you would answer to God. Choose your answer sooner rather than later. Choose before it’s too late.
