Mothers, oh mothers, oh mothers! The ones who stayed when everything else fell apart. The ones who carried us, comforted us, held us together — while we, the children of divorce, looked elsewhere. We communicated poorly, acted like fools, and rarely listened to mom. Because she was the one who stayed. And that’s where it all began.
When parents separate, the world splits in two. It’s like someone cuts life in half, and you’re forced to live in both pieces. Father becomes the hero; mother, the one left behind.
He gets the stories, the mystery, the adventure — she gets the bills, the arguments, the routine.
She carries reality; we run toward the dream.
I remember how we talked about our fathers with admiration, almost like they were rock stars. They laughed, they seemed free. Mom, on the other hand, said no. She told us to wake up, to do our homework, to take responsibility. She represented structure, while dad symbolized freedom. And what teenager chooses structure? None.
So we put our fathers on a pedestal. We made them symbols of the lives we wanted. We mistook their absence for freedom, not for escape.
And we let our mothers take the blame — for everything we couldn’t face in ourselves.
The Unfair Legacy
As adults, we begin to see it.
How mothers carried double: the guilt and the duty.
They became both caretaker and adversary, protector and target.
They took our anger, our silence, our disappointment.
And yet they stayed.
Always stayed.
What’s remarkable is that most of them never asked for thanks. They didn’t need our apologies — only our understanding. But it took decades to arrive there. Only when we faced life without safety nets did we begin to understand their strength, their solitude, their endless love.
My mother fought headwinds no one saw. She stood up for us when the world looked away. She woke up every morning, even when there was no strength left. She carried us like a climber carries her rope — not for herself, but so we wouldn’t fall.
Our fathers, meanwhile, became symbols of freedom, courage, and adventure.
But where were they when the light bulb needed changing, when the parent-teacher conference began, when grief needed a shoulder?
They lived in our stories — but rarely in our lives.
The Hero Who Didn’t Look Like One
Mothers rarely become heroes in movies. They’re not the ones we write books about.
They’re there — in the kitchen, in the hallway, in the silence.
They hold it all together when everything falls apart.
And that’s why they’re invisible.
Because we celebrate what shines, not what holds.
Looking back, I realize that much of our restlessness, our hunger for something bigger, came from missing our fathers — but our strength came from our mothers.
She taught us endurance, resilience, love without reward.
She taught us how to stay.
It’s only now, as an adult, that I understand what staying really means.
To stay when it’s easier to leave.
To love when it hurts.
To stand, quietly, every day — without applause.
And that’s exactly what mothers did. Every day.
Restoring the Balance
This isn’t about blaming fathers. It’s about restoring balance to a story that lost its truth.
For generations, we’ve glorified men for living freely — but rarely women for carrying what that freedom left behind.
We’ve called men adventurers, but not women survivors.
Looking back, I see a clear injustice. A system where women carried both the emotional and practical burdens, but rarely got recognition.
We, the children, thought we were wise — but we never saw who built the bridge we crossed.
Mothers did it without manuals, without rest, without audience.
And they did it out of love.
A Late Understanding
As adults, many of us try to make peace with that. We understand that maybe we betrayed them in silence. That we made them villains in our search for independence.
But the freedom we sought was already there — in her.
In the way she stayed.
Mothers, oh mothers, oh mothers — they carried us, not just as children, but as people. They gave us the backbone we now lean on.
And it’s time we give them something they never asked for, but always deserved: our gratitude.
Thank you, mom.
For staying when we ran.
For loving when we were hard to love.
For letting us hate you sometimes, just so we could learn to love ourselves again.
By Chris...
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