My Life with Mother

It was my senior year in high school when my mom told me that my cousin, Mayra, had given birth to a baby girl. However, child protective services decided that Mayra wasn’t adequate to take care of the child; due to her drug abuse. Child protective services from Mexico were trying to place the baby with close relatives. Sadly, there was only three choices, her grandma, my aunt Gloria, and myself. The choices were few and the family small.

No one doubted the girl’s story, until her pregnancy hit the nine month mark and no babies were born. This raised red flags for Jordan and his mother, Krissy Wyrabkiewicz, especially since multiples tend to be born prematurely. They became even more suspicious when they couldn’t confirm the girl’s doctor.

She lost her parents at a young age, so her grandparents struggled to take care of her and her brothers. Soon after her sixtieth birthday, my mom married my father, and they both welcomed me two years later. I was born in September 1999; unfortunately, five months after my birth, my father died in the hands of a stranger from a gunshot to the head. Although both my grandmother and mother were devastated by his passing, they both decided to once again fight for our future and raise me.

Monee was born in the city of Chicago. She lived in a small apartment in the ghetto. “We didn't have much but we made the most of it,” Monee told me during our interview. During Monee's freshman year of highschool, she met a boy named James Bryant. They soon fell in love and were inseparable. The fairytale came to an end when Monee got pregnant at 14 years old with her first born, Jaliya. Although she was scared and surprised, she knew she had to give her daughter a great life. Monee continued in school and found ways to make money so she could support her daughter. After Jaliya was born, everything seemed to fall into place. “Jaliya was a good baby. It was hard but we got through it.” Monee said. But not soon after Jaliya was two months old, Monee became pregnant again. By the time Monee was 19 years old, she had 4 beautiful daughters named Jaliya, Jakyra, Jazzlyn and Janya.

Montaldo (2016) writes, “Andrea and her future husband, Rusty Yates met each other in their Houston apartment complex. Much of their time revolved around religious studies and prayers. They married on April 17, 1993. Andrea Yates gave birth to five children. The Yates couple’s first-born Noah was born on (2/26/1994), John (12/12/1995), Paul (9/13/1997), Luke (2/15/1999), and Mary (11/30/2000)” (p. 1). Any natural mother giving birth to the

Suddenly, out of the blue, there was a new baby. I don’t remember my mom being pregnant. I don’t even remember a hospital stay. Basically, I thought my mom had woken up one morning a decided she wanted a baby. So, she drove to the hospital and got one. However, It never really clicked that we had to keep the baby. I kinda assumed we’d play with her a while and the I could go back to being the Queen.

Ta’esha was born 6 weeks early, in a Louisiana public hospital. Ta’esha mother, Ronita, 16, started bleeding and was hospitalized until delivering. The doctor blamed formaldehyde in her family’s FEMA-funded trailer, their home since Hurricane Katrina displaced them from New Orleans. He also sternly said that Ronita stopped smoking, waited for few years, and gotten prenatal care; Ta’esha would be bigger and healthier.

Carleen’s first pregnancy, starting in 1979 and ending in 1980, was out of wedlock and happened before meeting her ex-husband. During this pregnancy, she was a lower class, sixteen-year-old high schooler that resided in Detroit, Michigan. As of now and at the time of her interview, Carleen is a Christian, African American fifty-two-year-old woman with a Master’s Degree who is divorced with five daughters. She resides in Warren, Michigan and works at St. John Hospital as a parenting teacher. Given how long ago her first pregnancy was and that she had four pregnancies afterward, I was surprised by the amount of detail she recollected. Carleen had explained the level of ambiguity that came with being pregnant for the first time. Her body had changed, and she was unsure of how her mother would take the news. This fear of the unknown had led her to live with her older sister for three months before telling her mother the news. Thankfully, her mother took the news better than expected and assisted Carleen with prenatal responsibilities such as helping her maintain a healthy diet and moving her to a school for pregnant teens because she had physically struggled with the stairs at her traditional high

Countless women have a difficult time throughout pregnancy, a few even lose their child to a miscarriage or a stillborn, such as Rose of Sharon did. Sadly, my great-grandmother had a few miscarriages, as so have several other women. After talking to my grandmother, I have come to the conclusion that although they didn’t have the chance to watch their child experience life, they still love their child the same.

For my interview I decided to talk to a young mother that I met in one of my classes. For her privacy I will call her Sofia. Sofia told me that she had her first child at the age of 17. At this young age she was very unprepared for what was to come.

In the words of Marcus Garvey, ‘a people without the knowledge of their past, origin and culture is like a tree without roots’, I relate deeply to this.

On a chilly Wednesday on January 14 of the year 1998, I, an eight pounds, six ounces baby, was born. My mom and dad were in bed at ten the night before, and it was decided that the time was now, for her water broke and they were on their way to the hospital. I was dark haired and brown eyed, and my mom wanted to name me after her, but dad decided on the name Jolene, with a pronunciation twist and his own spelling.

On October 17, 2033, I was adopted from The Carey House For Girls soon after my third “birthday”, when Dixon was 10. I was your average orphan girl: left on the doorstep with a name around my neck before I could remember my parents faces, so the day i was taken in (October 11th) became my birthday. I never once wondered about who/where/how my birth parents were. I wasn’t mad that they gave me away nor was i curious as to why they did it. I simply didn’t care. For instance, One day when i was 13, a couple showed up at our house claiming to be my parents. Cia and Page were busy upstairs so I invited them in, shared some juice with them, chatted a bit with them, and then showed them out the door. By the time my mom asked me about who came in,

After my mother and I have an argument she usually smiles at me and says, it’s because we’re so much alike that we argue. She reminds me that our lack of communicating often stirs more trouble than why we were arguing. I used to get upset that my mom didn’t set time aside for our family to spend time together or make us eat together at the dinner table. I was upset because I was comparing our family to my friends’ families. I valued those things and assumed my mom didn’t, but I was wrong. My mom had so much on her mind everyday it was breaking her on the inside. Not only had I wanted my mom to be like my friend’s moms, now I had wanted my mom to be different because she was depressed. Bonhoeffer mentions that we desire images of others that we want, but aren’t the true image they bear as Christ’s (pg37-38). At first I was puzzled. How is a good image of mine, not Christ’s image for her? I learned that His image is neither right nor wrong, but simply uniquely divine. My mom could have done those things, but her whole life would have had to be different, and I would never want to change who my mom is.

Coming to the United States was a challenged that my brother and I need it to face, we were then leaving the only women we then saw as a mom, our aunt Maribel. According to my biological mother, Alejandrina, it was normal for the members of my family to give the children away to a relative. For instance, my grandmother had five daughters and she only took care of one, Alejandrina the fourth daughter. According to her, she was not in the best shape of supporting a kid, which is why she gave away the other four. During the years, I have noticed that the act of giving a child to a relative was usual. For instance, my aunt Maribel took care of eight individuals, where only