While considering the multiple definitions of feminist mothering and motherhood, I personally struggle with the question of whether feminism is intrinsic or organic. I realize this is a loaded question because there are many factors involved. Yet my own experiences lead me to question how do we raise our daughters to be strong women?  Does it require a strong mother to provide the example?  What is the twenty-first century definition of a 'strong woman' anyway? Is there a gene each woman is born with which dictates what type of woman she will become, or is environment the overriding factor? These are the types of questions that keep me up at night as I grapple with my own sense of motherhood/daughterhood/womanhood. As I rapidly approach forty, I find myself in the precarious situation of being mother to my three daughters, my own mother, and myself, leading me to question my decisions in a semi-schizophrenic dialogue even Dr. Phil would find challenging.

In 1997, I became the caretaker of my mother over the course of one weekend. Although she was only 49 at the time, she could no longer take care of herself due to a debilitating attack of Multiple Sclerosis. I had known about my mother's diagnosis for several years, but never knew the extent to which it had progressed until she drove herself to visit me for Halloween weekend. At the time, she lived in Houston, Texas, and I lived in San Antonio, Texas, with my 21-month-old daughter.  San Antonio is approximately 350 miles from Houston, roughly a 3-4 hour drive. My husband of six years had decided to leave our marriage in April of the same year. I had never told my mother the extent of the trouble in my marriage, but she somehow sensed it. When she arrived, I noticed that she was unable to walk straight and that her speech was somewhat slurred.  I asked if she'd been drinking and she laughingly changed the subject. Within minutes, I revealed the truth about my failing marriage, and she held me while I cried.

For the entire weekend my mother indulged both my daughter and me by taking us wherever we desired to eat, and by buying us both new clothes and toys. Such pampering was a habit I had grown accustomed to as the only child of a woman who had raised me without the benefit of a husband for eleven years. You see, although my parents were married until I was seven years old, my father was never home. When my mother became pregnant as a senior in high school, my father reluctantly married her because she was "a good girl," and he felt I should have a legal name. During the 1970s, with the Women's Movement in full swing, my mother was a married yet single mother, working full-time to support the two of us while my father was off doing who knows what with who knows whom. While her high school friends were beginning graduate school and wearing the latest fashions, my mother, dressed in conservative clothing with her hair neatly teased and shellacked in place with hair spray, was working in any office that would hire her since she had neither a high school diploma nor GED. Although we lived with my grandparents for years until she remarried when I was eleven, my mother never let me know just how broke we really were. She also never let me know the full extent of neglect my father showed towards us. In short, whenever a crisis arose, my mother chose to look on the bright side -- or so I thought that's what she was doing. I now realize it was her way of avoiding the inevitable. When, on that Sunday afternoon in 1997, we waved goodbye and she drove off, I felt a strange gnawing in my stomach that I might be following in my mother's footsteps.  Yet, something subconsciously told me that her shoes would never fit my feet. My own motherly feet would become much wider than my mother's had ever attempted to stretch.

Three hours after she left me, my phone rang. I expected it to be my mother saying that she had arrived safely at home.  Instead, it was a friend of hers in Houston calling to tell me that she was on her way to pick my mother up just 70 miles from my home. Normally, it would take about an hour to drive those 70 miles. However, her vision had become so impaired, and her hands and feet were so numb, that she pulled off of the road into a gas station and called her friend. Why didn't she call me? She figured I had enough to worry about and that I didn't need to add her to my list. However, I knew that she would never abandon me, so I packed up my daughter, called in for a substitute to take my classes the following day, and headed to pick her up.  It was with this decision that I shifted from being the daughter in our relationship into the mother's role.

With the help of my uncle, I moved my mother from Houston to San Antonio to live with my daughter and me.  I found a highly qualified neurologist who was on her insurance plan, and despite my mother's initial objections to the doctor's youth and gender (a woman just out of medical school), began the course of treatment that eventually led to an amazing recovery of my mother's eyesight and reversal of paralysis. I learned from the neurologist all about lesions on the brain and how they affect the central nervous system. What I also learned was that my mother was suffering from a severe case of mental depression, and that her physical health would not improve until her mental health had been treated. Depression?  Sure, I knew she had been through quite a lot over the past five years with bankruptcy and divorce, but she seemed fine.  To my way of thinking, she had been through worse in my childhood. How could she be depressed now?  \At thirty, I learned for the first time the extent of my mother's insecurities and depths to which she went to protect me from becoming the same weak person.

Although my mother is a chronological second-waver, she never participated in any feminist movements or activities. She was raised by her mother to be an executive secretary, and was told that the best she could hope for in life would be to marry the president of an oil company for which she should work. In short, she was taught to rely upon men to define her worth. Such teaching is in line with the critical observations of bell hooks as she discusses the misguided beliefs by some of the women (such as my Grandma) who lived between the first and second waves of feminism and their reliance upon patriarchal terms to define female independence.1 While my Grandma was not opposed to women working outside of the home, she believed that a wealthy husband was more beneficial to a woman than a good education. From my vantage point, it is easy to see how this led to my mother's low self-esteem. What is shocking is how she did not pass this mind-set along to me. What is even more confusing to me is how this lesson was taught to her in the first place.

My mother's mother (Grandma) was born in 1918 and came of age during the Depression. Grandma survived an incredibly abusive first marriage to a man who gave her a son, as well as a back alley abortion that nearly killed her. She watched her own brother shoot her husband to death in order to protect her from being strangled by her husband's drunken hands. As a single mother during World War II, Grandma worked as a welder to support her son. She made very good money, and insured that her son had all that he needed. However, she felt that her son needed a father, and she married my grandfather in 1946. She gave birth to my mother in 1948 and, in 1953, she had another son with my grandfather. Carrying baggage from her first marriage, Grandma was very hard on my grandfather and they frequently quarreled -- sometimes physically.  While I never heard them profess their love for one another, I was cognizant of the care they showed for one another through their daily actions. Although Grandma died when I was only ten years old, I still remember her as a strong, independent woman who ran her own beauty salon out of her home. Knowing the example my Grandma had provided for my mother, I could not understand how my mother could seem so weak and insecure -- and why was she so depressed? 

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, depression is a psychiatric disorder with symptoms such as misery, anguish, or guilt. In my naïveté, I couldn't imagine what my mother was so miserable about in her life. From my perspective, she had survived two failed marriages while raising a very headstrong daughter in the process.  While she did not receive her GED until I was twelve years old, she strongly encouraged and supported me the whole time I was an undergraduate in college. She was capable, when healthy, of working full-time and supporting herself without the assistance of a man. Why was she so depressed? It would take years of living with my mother as an adult for me to finally understand the depths of her own lack of self-confidence.

Upon the advice of her neurologist, my mother spent two weeks in a mental health facility. Although she signed herself in, she did so under the influence of my 'motherly' insistence that she must.  I will never forget the look on my mother's face as I turned to leave her in the facility. To correct the damage to one her left eye, she was wearing a patch over her right eye. She was very thin and was sitting in a wheelchair. With an expression of childlike fear on her face, she whispered goodbye. Thinking of that moment now, nearly nine years later, my own eyes fill with tears and the lump in my throat is still present. Leaving my mother that day was as difficult for me as it was to leave my daughter in day care. I make this analogy because although he had never attempted it, I lived in fear daily of the possibility that my soon-to-be ex-husband might pick my daughter up from day care and disappear. At that point in my life, my mother and my daughter were the only two people in the world that I felt I could trust to love me unconditionally. They were also the two people for whom I was solely responsible. If I could not be certain each morning that either one would be safe and secure, how could I possibly be expected to teach eighth grade English in a coherent manner? And yet, I knew that I must remain strong and continue to work in order to maintain some sense of individual sanity, as well as to provide financial support for the three of us. 

In time, and with the help of numerous medications, my mother's physical and mental health improved. She found work as a receptionist in an office near our home, and began to regain some of her independence. The smile that I remembered so well from my childhood returned to her face, as living with my daughter and me gave her something she had been missing -- female companionship. Although her own mother had been dead for twenty years, she still felt and acted like the dutiful daughter. Having never lived on her own until the three years preceding this decline in her health, she truly was ill equipped to make decisions for herself. Since I have always had a domineering personality, making decisions for my mother came naturally to me. This new responsibility also allowed me to avoid my own marital problems, and I threw myself into the care of my mother and child.

After fifteen months of separation, it became clear to me that my marriage was truly over and I filed for divorce. I was determined that I would never again let any man control my life for an entire decade. I would make my own decisions just as I had as an undergrad ten years before. However, the rules had now changed. With numerous responsibilities such as my child, my mother, my home, my pets, and myself to contend with, Gloria Gaynor's, I Will Survive, became my mantra. God help the man who dared to cross my path in an attempt to befriend me! Yet, I began to question how I came to be such a strong, independent woman when my mother was apparently quite the opposite. I also became aware of my mother's influence over my daughter and began to counteract her actions that I viewed as negative female stereotypes with positive, strong examples. While my mother and daughter had tea parties and princess play, I participated as the voice of (what I perceived to be) feminism with quips such as, "someday my prince will come -- but only on my terms."

Whether it was divine intervention or just dumb luck, I reluctantly met the man who is now my husband. He readily accepted the fact that he would be last in line for my attention and affection, and rarely complained about living with so many women. Two more daughters later, his complaining has increased slightly, but he still admires and loves the strength he sees in me and hopes that I pass it along to our daughters. In a world which pits man against woman in so many arenas, my macho, Italian husband has no qualms in admitting that he is not the "lord of the manor," but rather submits to his wife's decisions 95 percent of the time. When some people call me a bitch, my husband calls me babe -- and I am not offended by either title. This returns me to the nagging, rhetorical question of my life -- how did I evolve into the woman I am today (strong or stubborn – you choose the adjective)?

All of this leads me to further question if the second wave of feminism during the 1960s and 1970s resulted in the empowerment of white women, how did my own 'white' mother miss the movement? She was in her teens and twenties -- a time typically known for rebellion in a person's life. Also, how did a woman so afraid of change and naïve to the ways of the world raise a daughter (me) who is strong and fearless? Is education the key difference between my mother and I?  As a graduate student studying American female authors, I encounter feminist theory on a daily basis.  I am now able to give labels to some facets of my life. Yet, I also see inherent contradictions between theory and practice. Was my grandma too domineering for my mother's sense of self? Why didn't she foster a sense of female independence in her own daughter?

Before my first daughter was born, I taught high school English in the inner city. Many of my students were bilingual, while their parents frequently spoke only Spanish. If I needed to have a conference with them, the child would attend to translate for both teacher and parents.  It recently struck me that such a situation gives the child a tremendous amount of power over the parent because if the child is the interpreter, the child has the choice of words and phrases to present to the parent. Although my mother and I both speak fluent English, we, too, are frequently in this same situation. When dealing with Social Security, I must speak with the officials, as well as prepare the paperwork. If I leave it to my mother to handle, she becomes very agitated and cannot complete the task.  Without her mood altering, antidepressant medication, my mother will sit and cry rather than deal with a potentially confrontational situation. At the same time, my two and five year olds will stand and scream into one another's faces to resolve a conflict rather than calmly decide who will first play with the toy of the moment. And as I move from one mothering scenario to the next, I am frequently irritated that I have been placed in this situation. I am not angry at, nor am I disappointed with, my mother. I am angry that her physical condition has caused a break in her mental status and metamorphosed her into a mother I never knew as a child. Or should I consider how my own perspective has changed?

As the mother of three daughters, I feel like I am the calm between the waves. I hope to pass along the belief that all women should be strong. All women should be independent. All women should never be afraid to admit when they need help -- from a man or a woman. I want my daughters to see the intrinsic value they each have simply because they are Kelsie, Natalie, and Renee. My oldest daughter struggles with the fact that her last name is different from everyone else in our house. I tell her my own story. I was born with one man's last name, traded it for my stepfather's name, took the last name of her father when we married, and now have yet a fourth man's last name. I explain to her how none of those surnames matter to me as much as my first name, Terri. When she is irritated by people who do not spell her first name correctly, I smile because I understand her frustration. And I encourage her to speak loudly and forcefully when she spells her name correctly for them. I want all three girls to take pride in their own accomplishments first before relying on what their family has achieved before them. Ironically, I want the same for my mother. I want her to be proud of herself as a woman -- not simply as my mother. And just as I do with my daughters, I take baby steps with my mother in an effort to guide her toward a higher sense of self-esteem.

mmo : august 2006