Circle of Life

Our childhood experiences influence who we become as adults, and even more so, who we become as parents.

I can never truly think about what kind of a parent I am without exploring my own upbringing. As I delve deeper, I realize that consciously or not, how I was brought up has a strong bearing on all the choices I make as a parent. That is where it all started.

I must have been 12-years-old when my parents found their calling in life and became completely occupied with it. My nine-year-old sister and I, while being comfortably taken care of, were pretty much left to our own devices. While this made me quite independent and responsible, it did leave emotional gaps that I spent years dealing with. When I became a mother, I wanted to do the exact opposite of what my parents did. Always being available to my children became the defining factor of motherhood for me. My parents didn’t express affection very openly or freely, and it made me hug my children tighter. I harbored hurt for a long time because I had felt invisible and unheard around my parents. This made me create a life that mostly revolved around my children.

My upbringing didn’t just give me a list of what not to do. I would consider myself a success if I can pass on to my children even some of the values that my parents imbibed in me. I am grateful for the faith they instilled in me. The values of hard and sincere work among many others have come to define my life. The attitude towards spirituality and material wealth that they embodied has stood me in great stead.

My journey as a mother began by blaming my parents for all my shortcomings as a parent. Soon enough, the many challenges of adulthood and parenthood softened that blame and it was slowly replaced with a deeper understanding of my parents’ choices. If I was a result of my upbringing, they were a result of theirs. Then who is to be blamed, and how many generations does one go back to point fingers?

My upbringing remains the bedrock of my parenting; much in me comes from the mothers before me. Yet I continue to evolve into my own kind of a mother. In this journey that goes back generations, certain negative patterns of parenting do have to be broken. Having more awareness about parenting than the mothers before me, the onus of breaking these rests with me, but my mother must have broken some in her own way too. And my daughter will probably break some more. Despite all this, I know that as a parent, I too will fall short. I will be blamed and eventually forgiven. My children will also conclude at some point, as I did, that we all do the best that we can. This is the circle of life.