A Mother's Day Reflection "I Had to Go Back" — What Sankofa Taught Me About Maternal Love

A Mother's Day Reflection

"I Had to Go Back" — What Sankofa Taught Me About Maternal Love

I didn’t inherit a soft place to land.

My mother’s hands didn’t cradle — they carried, but with expectations, silence, and judgment.

I’m sure there was some part of her that wanted to be more. She gave what she could.

But it wasn’t enough. Not for the girl I was. Not for the mother I needed.

So I had to go back.

Sankofa.

Not to her — but to the spaces where love had visited me, even briefly.

To the teacher who noticed when I was too quiet.

To the warm words of the spiritual women I admired in my youth.

To the aunties who weren’t mine, but let me linger in their light.

To the way my friends mothered their children — imperfectly, but with fierce love — and let me watch.

And I found it, too, in the women I collected along the way.

In my best friend who cried for me when I couldn’t cry. Who wished she could be there when distance kept her far.

In my sisters, both by blood and by bond, who checked in for quick hellos or long, soul-filling chats.

In the way those same women became proud aunties to my babies — with ease, with joy, with no hesitation.

That kind of love taught me. That kind of love stayed with me.

And then there was her —

A mothering force who came through marriage, but showed up with a kind of love I wasn’t ready for.

Her love was loud, immediate, often overwhelming.

Bold and too much — but sometimes, exactly what I didn’t know I needed.

She didn’t wait for permission to belong to me. She just did.

And somehow, in the quiet moments when I was unraveling, her presence — her persistence — became something steady.

These women filled the silent spaces.

They taught me that maternal love doesn’t have to be earned.

It doesn’t always arrive how I imagined.

And it doesn’t always wait for me to be ready.

Sometimes, it just comes — offered, chosen, engulfing — and I learned to breathe inside of it.

This, too, was Sankofa.

Going back — not just for what was lost, but for what had been waiting.

Unrecognized, but still mine.

I had to go back — to remember the small echoes of care, to feel the warmth I once knew, and to gather what I needed.

I mother myself from those pieces.

I mother my children from those pieces.

And those pieces allow me to show up through the milestones and the messy middle.

I show up for the late nights, the early mornings, the whispered apologies.

I say all the words I never heard — but want to believe were there.

I go back and get it so I can forgive the things I should have learned.

I go back so I can speak gently, even when no one spoke gently to me.

I apologize.

I repair.

I try again.

I parent my babies. And I reparent myself — every day.

I did not become the mother I saw. I became the mother I sought.

And I keep going back for more — for the tenderness I missed, the wisdom I now give, and the love I now know I deserve.

This is my Sankofa.

I had to go back — To become who I am now. To give what I never got. To raise my children whole.