Woke up Mother’s Day alone in my apartment with my dog per usual but had a few missing texts from my siblings in our group chat. Usually in past years there would’ve been a lot of gratitude shown towards my eldest sister how “she raised us” this time none at all not even on social media posts. Yes of course as the oldest sibling there is always a lot of added pressure and in a way mandatory help parents require from you. I am not overlooking that at all she of course helped mom but as you get older, mature and most importantly heal you start seeing peoples true colors. My big sister is toxic, immature, and the constant victim which I will delve into it deeper another time. But we do have a ten year age gap, she most definitely helped raised my other siblings but she left our home at 17 years old and prior to that she moved to Tijuana for some time during our childhood. Our mother worked at times up to three jobs but she always made sure we had meals prepped and ready to go, had our transportation or babysitting arrangements lined up.
We saw our mom constantly exhausted, while she worked we took care of the home. Saturdays were for cleaning and doing laundry while Sunday’s mom meal prepped our food for the week. Luckily still had a lot of fun childhood memories in between. But mom did that, she took care of all of it, she handled it alone, yes our community helped at times but my single mother was in charge. Now as a thirty year old who has experienced a lot of high and lows, grown a lot and continue to do so I look up to mom as inspiration and when I need a pick me up to keep pushing I look to her. Because she NEVER gave up. She persevered and was relentless. My mom was going to accomplish shit in life and she sure as hell did. By working multiple jobs, doing construction on the Las Vegas Strip, and simultaneously investing into her businesses back home. Bought a house, drove her dream car a 1967 Mustang for ten years and bought two beach houses in Mexico.
Her grit accomplished all of that and set the standard within us, especially her three youngest. Yes I completely acknowledge she wasn’t the most helpful when it came to emotions and talking about our feelings but therapy helped in understanding her. She didn’t know how since that was never modeled for her, she was brought up in a constant fight mode “feelings” were the last thing on her mind when she and her siblings were trying to prevent their father from beating their mother to death from physical abuse.
So as I sent her a message on that morning I expressed my deep gratitude because that’s all I can do for modeling all of that for me. She replied and thanked me but also reminded me any and all success I have accomplished is because of my hard work. But she will always have some credit, I am deeply grateful to have her as my mother. Not one person on Earth is perfect and like I said in the beginning maturing and healing makes you realize that. So if you feel some kind of way towards your parents I understand and I see you but you may actually have a problem with your grandparents since they were your parents role model. That’s the generational trauma we are trying to break, so I recommend having a little empathy towards your parent and looking at it through a different lens.

– Love KD