The myth of female solidarity: why can’t mothers be in solidarity with each other?

There are many fairy tales that they tell us and that we like to believe . Fairy tales that make us dream of a better present than the one we live in, fairy tales we rely on to overcome everyday difficulties, fairy tales that give us illusions that simply make us feel better.
One of these is undoubtedly that of female solidarity and in this case of solidarity between mothers, an issue that we never tire of addressing. Just as it is true that being a child is not enough to want to play together,   it is equally true that having children is not enough to become friends.

However, there are many thoughs .

The first is perhaps given by the fact that motherhood is such an important and at the same time complex experience that it tests any woman, in many different ways: personal, work, relationship with herself and with the world.

It is easy to experience very human feelings of ambivalence: enthusiasm and fear, happiness and nostalgia, the desire to re-appropriate some aspects of life before having children and at the same time feeling fulfilled in the new condition.

It means witnessing a physical and mental transformation of oneself, it often means finding a new couple balance with great difficulty, or how it can happen to extricate oneself in a new management of roles.

Because if it is true that a woman has nine months to get used to the idea of ​​becoming a mother, for a man awareness can also come at different times.

In short, lights and shadows that many of us have experienced in some respects, for a second, for days, or for whole years. Lights and shadows that should, and the conditional is not used by chance, make us perhaps not friends, but certainly a little more empathetic and less harsh towards other women .

Female solidarity, this unknown

Female solidarity too often not only does not occur, but the opposite occurs.  Personally, I realized that solidarity between women is a story probably written not only by a good screenwriter, but even more probably by a man who is not aware of some dynamics .

I realized it when, still in the fifth month of pregnancy, I went to visit some relatives and two of my aunts started laughing saying that they really didn’t see me being a mother, that I was too dreamy and not very concrete, and they concluded with the ‘anathema of ” you’ll notice soon “.
The serious aspect is that they weren’t joking at all, and I, a thirty-two-year-old dreamer who was expecting to share experiences and advice, felt humiliated and inadequate for the first time, even before starting, if possible.

And I didn’t know that this was just the aperitif and that the best would come later in that climate that too often reigns among mothers of indifference mixed with judgement.

The race for the first class podium is always open: those who breastfeed, those who don’t breastfeed, those who send their children to nursery school and those who don’t, those who work and those who stay at home, every choice is always subject to harsh criticism, very often free and unmotivated.

The groups of mothers say it very much : more and more requests for help not only anonymously, but which begin with the prayer not to be judged.

But judgment comes, relentless

And together with the judgment the momentum to share fades, until it vanishes completely. Who can still have the impetus to expose themselves, when they know they are only receiving judgements?

Thus, slowly, the heart becomes layered: the outer one is colored and tells of happy days, but deeper down, it hides shadows, melancholy and secrets, like a dessert savored with enthusiasm that surprises with bitter and unexpected notes.

You will be tired many times and you won’t be able to tell anyone because  there are two unwritten laws of the maternal :  the first is that the effort is amply repaid by the joy of the child, the second consists in the old adage of did you want the bicycle? Then pedal!

Except that by pedaling and keeping silent we slowly fade away and perhaps we women, with the surprising qualities we are gifted with, concrete, solid, determined, would know and could do if only we wanted something better.
Life is born from women, always.
From ability, self-denial, hands, thoughts and memories. And a mother knows all this, maybe we should remember more often that we are closer than we think.