In my younger phase, I used to be that guy who would see a mother shouting at her child in the market and I whisper why is she so harsh?
Can't she talk calmly?
I would see a mother feeding her child biscuits for breakfast and I will exclaimed and said, ah, this woman is lazy.
Why not cook?
I would see a mother who left her child with her mother to go and hustle, and I would conclude that she doesn't love her child enough to go out with the child.
I judged freely.
Because I had never carried that weight.
Then my sister became a mother and everything changed.
My sister, UT was the neatest, most patient girl I knew.
The kind that would arrange her wardrobe by color.
The kind that would never raise her voice.
She got married, got pregnant, and gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Testimony.
The first month, I visited their house. The same UT who used to have a spotless room, her sitting room was scattered with baby clothes, diapers, wet wipes.
Her hair was rough.
Her eyes were red from lack of sleep.
Testimony cried from 1am to 4am every single night. No reason. He just cried. UT would carry him, sing for him, pat him, trek around the house for hours while her body was still bleeding and paining her from childbirth.
One afternoon, I saw her crying in the kitchen. I asked why. She said, I'm a bad mother. Testimony has been crying and I don't know what he wants. I have not even taken my bath since morning. I'm hungry but if I drop him he will cry.
That day, shame caught me and I was out of thoughts.
This motherhood thing is not beans.
We judge mothers because we only see 10 seconds of their 24-hour movie.
We see a mother who is always on her phone and we call her careless. We don't know she has been awake since 4am, cooked, cleaned, bathed the kids, taken them to school, gone to her shop, and the only 10 minutes she has to breathe is when she scrolls through her phone.
We see a mother who slapped her child in public. We call her wicked. We didn't see that child almost ran into the road and her heart almost left her chest.
We see a mother who is fat and has let herself go. We say, she doesn't take care of herself.
We didn't see that she has eaten her children's leftover food for 2 years because there is never enough money or time to cook for herself.
We see a mother who shouted, I am tired. We say she is complaining too much. We don't know she has been tired for 5 years straight without a single day off. No weekend. No sick leave. If she is sick, she is still a mother.
A father can say, I am going out and go. A mother's job never ends. Even in sleep, one ear is open listening for a cry.
I now understand why my own mother would wake up at 4:30am every day for years to make sure we had hot food before school. Why she would use the same wrapper for years so we could have new school uniforms. Why she would sometimes be so harsh and say, will you keep quiet not because she hated us, but because she was overwhelmed and didn't know how else to say I am drowning, please help me.
Until you become a mother, you will never understand that love can be so deep that you would give your life, but also so exhausting that you sometimes want to run away for just one hour.
Until you become a mother, you will never understand that you can do everything right and your child will still cry, still fall sick, still misbehave in public.
Until you become a mother, you will never understand that your own time becomes a luxury you beg for.
So now, when I see a mother in public, I don't judge. I smile at her. If her child is crying and she is struggling, I help her carry her bag. If she is shouting, I understand she is not shouting at the child, she is shouting at tiredness.
To every mother reading this especially those doing it without much help, you are not a bad mother.
You are a tired mother.
You are a trying mother.
And that is enough.
You are doing great.
And to those of us who are not yet mothers, let's do better.
Let's offer help, not judgement.
Let's offer food, not gossip.
Let's offer to carry the baby, not to carry the story.
Because motherhood is a school you only understand when you enroll.
What is one thing you judged mothers for before, that you now understand?
Share in the comments, let's learn together.
Written by someone who has learned to stop judging and start helping