motherly mantras
From warnings to wisdom, the things our mothers say can linger in the back of our minds for a lifetime. Here, four Stylist women share the sentence they never forgot, while a therapist unpacks how it’s shaped them
words: meena alexander
illustration: toby triumph
The moment before you even took your first breath, you were listening to your mother. At 18 weeks in the womb you’d started to hear her voice, and by 30 weeks you were absorbing her words and trying to make sense of them. Today, something she said is probably still ringing in your ears. Our relationship with our mums is the first and often most formative of our lives. For some, a mum is a best friend and guiding light, but contrary to card shop windows at this time of year that’s not the only story. Some of us have lost our mums, are estranged from them, or maybe they just don’t get us. But one thing they all have in common is the profound impact they can have on us, because even the absence of a mother shapes the women we become. Mother figures loom large in our lives, and most of us have a few of their choice phrases that play on repeat. It might be a passing comment on how you looked that meant you never wore stripes again, or a piece of advice about love that stuck. Think of how many times you’ve rolled your. “They act as mirrors, reflecting back who we are. If they tell us something about ourselves, we believe it, and that association continues in our emotional mind long after our rational one grows up and realises our mothers are not all-knowing.” This power over us also creates pressure: mothers are expected to always get it right in a way fathers are not. “There is a lot of mother-blaming that goes on, especially online, where everyone is learning the language of childhood trauma and attachment theory,” says Hasseldine. “Mothers are still expected to be the primary, perfect caregivers, but we should remember that they can only parent to the level of emotional, practical and financial support they got.” She gives an example that teenagers in tiny skirts have heard the world over: ‘You’re not going out in that.’ “It’s sexist and it’s not right but it usually comes from a place of protection, from a mother raised in a different generation who felt this helped her survive. It’s important to understand the impact our parents have on us, while also understanding where they’re coming from.” To demonise our mums for all the things they shouldn’t have said isn’t necessarily useful, nor is putting them on a pedestal. They are human, as are we, and looking at the lessons they’ve passed onto us with curiosity rather than judgment is a way to get to know them and ourselves better. Here, four Stylist women muse on a sentence their mothers said to them, and psychotherapist Susanna Abse sheds some light on why it stuck.
