We mirror what we were modeled as children.
For me, that model was my mother.
Growing up, my mom did everything. She cooked, cleaned, did laundry, paid bills, bought groceries, took my grandparents to appointments, took us to appointments, worked a full-time job, helped with homework, got us up in the morning, and made breakfast. There were three of us kids, and some mornings she got up even earlier to cook breakfast for my dad before the rest of us woke up.
Why did she do all of this?
Because it was what she was taught. It was what she saw growing up. It was what my grandmother did. And if I had to guess, it was what many generations before them did too.
Their lives were rooted in faith, tradition, and survival. For many women, being a good wife and caretaker wasn't simply something you did. It was often tied to your identity and purpose. Before women had many of the opportunities they do today, these roles weren't just expectations. They were a way of life.
When you really stop and think about it, that wasn't that many generations ago.
I've mentioned before that I've spent a lot of time deconstructing many of the beliefs I was raised with. As I've gotten older, I've become curious about where those beliefs came from and how they were passed from one generation to the next.
As a product of being raised in a more free-thinking society, I did something that felt almost unthinkable in the religion I grew up in.
I questioned.
Not just family roles and traditions, but bigger questions about faith, purpose, and identity. I questioned what I had been taught. I questioned where certain beliefs came from. I questioned the idea that our worth should be defined by how well we fit into a role that someone else created for us.
There was often tension between what I was taught and what I was discovering for myself. I had a constant struggle between what I grew up knowing and what I now know to be true for myself.
What I've come to realize is that we are rarely taught how to define our worth on our own terms. More often, our worth is handed to us by society, religion, family expectations, or culture. We learn who we are by learning the roles we are supposed to fill.
And sometimes we get lost in those roles.
I know I have.
Even though I've embraced my own truth and found my own path, the echoes of what I was modeled still live within me. The caretaking. The responsibility. The feeling that it is somehow my job to keep everything together. Most of the time those expectations are never spoken out loud. They're simply there, quietly influencing how we move through the world.
As I've been reflecting on all of this lately, I've realized something else.
When people talk about my mom, they often describe her as a fine Christian lady.
And she was.
But she was also so much more than that.
She loved to laugh and cut up. If someone said a phrase that reminded her of a song, she would immediately start singing it. Sometimes she made up songs just to lighten the mood. I catch myself doing the same thing now.
She loved books and spent many quiet moments reading. She enjoyed gardening. When my brothers and I were children, she would make up bedtime stories from her imagination. She listened. Many nights she sat with me at the kitchen table and listened to whatever was on my mind. She encouraged all of us to be our best selves.
I remember trying to put lipstick on her once and both of us laughing so hard that I could barely finish. I remember her standing in the river fussing at my dad while he took us kids out into the deeper water because she never learned to swim. I remember card games around the table, bowls of mint chocolate chip ice cream before bed, and a woman who wanted her children to love one another.
The older I get, the more I realize that when I was younger, I mostly saw what my mom did. It has taken time for me to see who she was.
Not just my mother.
Not just a wife.
Not just a Sunday school teacher.
Not just a fine Christian lady.
She was a woman with her own imagination, humor, fears, dreams, strengths, and inner life.
I was in my early twenties when she passed away. Looking back, I realize I was still learning who I was and perhaps only beginning to understand who she was too.
Maybe that is why this realization feels so important to me.
Because if my mother was more than the roles she carried, then perhaps I am too.
My art has become one of the ways I explore that idea. It allows me to express the things that don't fit neatly into words. The questions, the longings, the connection I feel to nature, mystery, and the parts of life that can't always be explained.
When I create, I am often searching beneath the surface. Not for answers, but for something more authentic. A reminder that we are more than the labels we inherit and more than the roles we perform.
The mask comes off when we begin to see that.
Not just in ourselves, but in the people we love.
Maybe that's what I've been trying to express all along.
