Storytelling and sharing

What makes one lonely as a parent sometimes, is being alone, not having a family.

I really enjoy spending time with kids. Now that I have my own kid, I sit and talk with them, share stories, and they tell me about what happened at school, it is fun, and when you are a mother you laugh all the time.

The time that I enjoy the most about being a mother is that I can ask my kid to do errands for me, stay with them, and have them communicate with other kids, so I really enjoy that.

What am I doing, is taking care of my family… while renting a chain, one of those saloons because I want to be an independent woman because I’m not after any sponsoring because here, we don’t have much finance supporting systems.

I would like to talk about children who have problems, who are called special needs babies. I would like to ask that we take care of these kids, and give them extra love.

Okay my name is Nokwanda. When I had my first child it was very difficult because I had no one helping me, I was renting out a place.

What I would like to talk about, is how we should behave as women, because things are not alright in South Africa.

The one person who has been very supportive in this motherhood journey, is my husband.

I have a great relationship with my children, I am like a sister to them. I advise them, they listen to me, they are coping, others are working right now, one is about to complete school.

The kindest to me was my mother, you know my mother was the best even though she is no longer alive. By the time the father of my child left me he did not support the child, but my mother never deserted me she raised my child.

Well, it was something… quite out of the blue and you could have seen the joy in his face when we first went to see the baby and he couldn’t believe it himself and for me I just bonded with the child from the first minute I saw her and up to today she’s still my baby.

You know, I think what makes it easier is that every child is so different. So you love every child for a different reason and in a different way. Some you love because they look so damn cute and you can’t get your eyes off them…

So being a young mother hasn’t been very easy but with my mom’s support it has been the greatest journey ever. With that being said; it’s because my daughter lives with my mom and so I only see her on weekends, but every single day when I talk to her over the phone, she sends me Whatsapp’s of things that my daughter does

Having a baby at a very young age for me; it taught me to be responsible first of all because at the time I was in school, I was schooling. Having a child at home, I had to leave the child at home and then go to school.

Well, my journey began quite some time ago. I have been married, very happily, for the last, almost 18 years and to a great guy and an amazing husband and obviously, as our marriage progressed, we were keen to start a family…

My support system was my sister for both my pregnancies, especially the first one because I was still very young but she became like a mother to me…

As a mother, you must be supportive first, before you give support because you can’t give what you don’t have.

Yes, mothers, we need to be vulnerable for us to be healed. The more you open up and you dig down to your problems you share with other people, it’s gone and all the weight goes away and you’ll be healed.

This is Progress. You know, for me to be a better mother I think I need to have time for myself – ‘me time’ because sometimes, we as mother’s, we are too busy with everything.

For yourself first… to care for other people you have to care for yourself first and you have to love yourself and then when you love yourself you will go out and give other people the love that you have and also you have to receive love from other people.

You know in life you need people to help you but the people, they will never know if you we struggle for something. If you have problems, you must communicate. Tell the people that are around you what you feel so that they can help you.

It’s a challenge sometimes and its fun sometimes because we play together, we sing, we dance together but then sometimes I feel that I need someone who is going to play a father part in his life and it’s a challenge to me because I have to play that role.

My daughter was born in 2014. It was really bad because when I got to the labour ward, it was hard – the nurses told me that there was something that didn’t go out in my womb so I have to go to the ICU for that.

I would say it’s so much challenging, it challenged me up to the point where I was mentally affected as well. It is so difficult because I have to become a psychiatric to my husband because he was brain damaged. I had to be a… psychologist to him and to my kids, I had to be a counsellor to my children..

Most of the people in our community, they say “girls who have a child in an early age they’re loose” like we don’t love ourselves, we love boys, that’s why we just throw ourselves at boys. Actually it’s not true because…

I think as mothers, we need to form support groups in our community whereby we can talk about our struggle of being a mother. Whether you’re a single mother or you have your partner like who is supporting you or your family because… why?

Okay, so… Women of Worth Circle – story telling circle has a very brilliant session basically got us women to actually talk about our motherhood journeys, the difficulties we’ve faced, basically how we bring that is not one of the last ones.

So for me the kindest person in my motherhood journey has been my husband. And I feel like he has been there since day one. He understands when I say “I need space; can you hold him for me?”

Okay… the kindest person in my motherhood journey I would say… most of the time it was the neighbours… outside our people from the community. I remember the other day because I got a…

Hello everyone, my name is Nomfundo Msomi and the advice I would like to give women and mothers in South Africa is that; we spend so much time regretting, crying, resenting the journey of being mothers due to our circumstances that we face but we forget that we are powerful beings…

Yes, it was 39 years ago and my mom was not married then and it was always known with the nurses at that time, they’re very strict with young girls who had kids when they were still single and when it was time for them to deliver the kids at the ward…

The reason why I chose her name is because I was happy to have her so that is why I said Sinovuyo because of the support of the family; my family was supportive, my sisters, my brothers and my mother were supporting me.

I have learned that to raise the child is not only for the mother – the father also needs a chance to raise the children because there was one instance, we had a quarrel with my husband and then my daughter wrote a letter that said “Mom can you please give me my father the last chance?”

The regret that I have… when it came to Cape Town. I finished my matric and then I came to Cape Town. I came here to study but I didn’t apply early, so I have to take a gap year and then during that gap year I met someone, and I fell pregnant.

Who has been the kindness to me as a mother, is my sister. She’s the most amazing sister ever that I have. She was helpful since, since I was in labour, I remember I went straight to the hospital and my sister came after, and she was the one that was rubbing my back through the pains…

For me it’s that like mothers can support each other, which means they can meet, like find that space of their own mothers and come together and talk about what each mother needs and what each mother – where she feels like she doesn’t get enough of how can we come together and support each other

The person who has been the kindest to me in my motherhood journey was my mother because when I was in labor, I couldn’t give birth, I was still in labor.

Motherhood… people talk about the love that you will feel for your child before you become a mother and you can cognitively listen to them and try to understand, but there really is an inability to approximate that until your child comes into your life and that is a huge thing that I’ve now realized after becoming a mother.

I think I wish that… before I became a mom, my fellow mothers and friends, who already had children, would have pulled me aside and given me permission to not enjoy every minute of the journey of motherhood.

I think that a lot of women that are not moms, tend to actually underestimate their own ability to step in to be there for moms, because you feel as though you are lacking the experience to be able to resonate with what they’re going through.

What would make it easier? Honestly, some more support groups. I don’t see – and I’m not one of those political people – but I don’t see the government giving any type of emotional support to mothers.

So I don’t know much about the story of my birth. I was abandoned at birth at a bus station in Lusaka… and then I was taken to the orphanage shortly after that.

My loneliest moment as a mother was the second night, after my son was born. My husband had stayed over in hospital the first night and so I hadn’t been alone – I was also hopped up on morphine.

One has been my very good friend … she’s a mother of a friend of my second born son and when I had Christopher, my last born, there’s a 14-year gap between him and the brother he follows, I was 45, it was a very difficult pregnancy and…

I’ve definitely learnt that I am a lot stronger than I think and that I am very resilient and mothers as a whole are very resilient. Both through my own journey being a mom, but also now as a mother looking at my mom’s mother and her journey.