I love being a mom. I love being a stay-at-home mom. But I have my bad days. My tired days. My overstimulated days. My I’m not doing enough days. Days where I question if I’m the best influence, role model, and caregiver for my girls. And days where it seems easier to go out and get a job because money is more instant than the fruits of child-rearing. But these are just days, not my entire life. And then I think about the lives of black mothers who’ve come before me. I think about black mothers who were forced to be wet nurses for the children of their slave masters, thus, being stripped of the opportunity to bond with their own children. What a blessing that I have the opportunity to breastfeed my babies. I think about black mothers of the Jim Crow era, who were not able to raise their own children or manage their own homes to their desire because they had to provide for said children and home by managing someone else’s home and raising someone else’s children. What a blessing that my home is my sanctuary, that I know it from top to bottom and can curate all of its contents. What a blessing that I have the opportunity to create schedules and a lifestyle for me and my children, and I can say no to things that are not a good fit for us. When I’m having a bad day as a mother, I think about the sacrifices of the women who raised my mother, and her mother, and her mother before that. I think about the honor within motherhood and the perseverance and beauty within black womanhood. These sacrifices wrapped in historical trauma have created space, resources, and visibility for me to be a black woman who is a stay-at-home wife and mom. While I am living my dream, I imagine that I am the wildest dream of the black mothers before me.
