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... To grow up without the affections of a mum
A happy daughter and her mother. It is ideal for a mother to be around as her daughter grows up but some daughers do not get that chance. NET PHOTO
What you need to know:
The relationship between a woman and her mother is so powerful, it affects everything from her health and self-esteem to all her other relationships. Experts have even suggested that no other childhood experience is as compelling as a young girl’s relationship with her mother. To be denied this privilege is a bitter experience that one woman recounts.
As the rest of the world goes about pampering their mothers this Mother’s Day, I on the other hand will go about my business. This is something I have become accustomed to. Never in my life have I celebrated mother’s day. You may be thinking that I probably have no mother. But I do. It’s just that I was never given the chance to know her. I have people in my life that I am much closer to than my own mother.
Un-planned birth
I am one of those cases you would refer to as the unplanned for pregnancies. When my mother got pregnant, my father, apparently had no plans of marrying her and I guess that is why a few months after I as born, I was whisked away to live with my grandmother (R.I.P),who is the closest I have come to know of as a mother figure. Even during the time that I was at my grandmother’s, I don’t remember getting much visits from my mother.
At the age of five, I moved to Kampala to live with my father and step mother. My step mother had children of her own and so had very little time to mind about me.
Tough childhood
Many times, I saw my peers with their mothers, especially during visitation days at school, and I would hurt deep down inside.
When I moved to kampala,I took over seven years before I was allowed to go and pay my mother a visit. Even when they came,these visits didn’t do much to help the situation.
I felt like she was a stranger, and that getting to know her would take time. I am not saying that I didn’t love her, I did.
I just felt that we lacked a really strong connection . I felt more attached to my grandmother that I had spent the earlier years of my life with than with my birth mother.
The pain of being left out
Many times, I always sat with my friends and heard them going on and on about the fun things they had done with their mothers or the places they had visited together, I silently wept. Moments like these, I really missed her, and wished that things could have probably been different.
The absence of my mother in my life taught me a great deal of things, like always looking out or my self. Some times, I would take years and years before we met at family gatherings like funerals. And even then, I didn’t know how to act around her.
Distant relationship
My mother and I live miles apart from each other, so while growing up, I sometimes found myself spending over five years without seeing her. This distance, I believe, slowly but surely killed the bond that should have existed between my mother and I.
The situation is made even more complicated by the bad blood between my mother and father. All the years that I have spent with my father, he nwas the least of my mother’s fans. He never said anything good about her. He constantly told me about how I never got anything from my mother and as such, I was made to believe that I never needed her.
I remember a particular time when my maternal grandfather passed on and to my surprise my father forbade me from attending the funeral. The small moments like these when I would be able to bond with the woman that brought me into this world, were slowly but surely being robbed from me.
Making up for lost time
Recently, I made up my mind, to try and reconnect with my mother, and I have established a communication platform where I call her once in a while and check on her. i wouldn’t say that its too late to catch up on the lost years, but it sure isn’t going to be easy, for many reasons, the lack of a steady connection being one of them. For those that have had the opportunity to have your mothers with you as you grew up, I wish you a happy Mother’s Day, and please cherish them. Happy Mother’s Day!
As told to Gloria Haguma Send your experiences to
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