1: My Personal Story

Every Mother Matters With Sharon Ow

Transcript For Ep1:

Welcome to Every Mother Matters. I'm Sharon and in this episode, I will be sharing with you my personal story.

I knew very little about my parents because the older generation like my parents did not talk much about the past.

I knew that my mother was given away because she was born in the year of the tiger, which was seen as an un auspicious sign to her biological parents. Her adopted parents wanted to send her to attend school but she refused. During the second world war when my father was a teenager, he was given the chance to study Japanese or to work for the Japanese. He hated them and did not want to learn their language. So, he chose to work.

The first time when I knew that my father loved me was when my friend told me that my father was always looking lovingly at me when I was already in my 20s. When I was young, most of the time he was out for work. In his eyes, I should be happy because he was providing for the family and my only job was to study. I always felt that I was the extra one in the family since there was no room in my mother’s heart for a daughter.

I was a very lonely, quiet and obedient girl. There was almost no communication with my mother as she did not like girl. No one talk to me. Growing up was tough emotionally because my voice was never being heard or respected. No one trusted me when I talked about my mother’s behaviour when my brothers were not home. I learned to be silent.

They thought that my mother loved me too much and I was the spoiled one. My brother said that if what I said was true about my mother, then why should I still be eating the food my mother cooked and stepped on the floor which was cleaned by my mother.

Many years later after I did energy therapy I suddenly realised that anything I ate was so tasty. I was so disassociated with food and I realised that my brother's words actually caused the loss of my taste bud for years and I did not realise it.

As my mother was in her 50s when she was going into menopause, her mood swing was very obvious. She would be very emotional and threatened to jump out of the window and the next minute when my father or brother came home, she would make herself a cup of tea and she would drink it like nothing had happened.

The worst thing she said to me was that I was very lucky that I was not a prostitute. When I told my father about it, my father denied it and said that she must meant something else. My father loved my mother very much and he was taking care of her until she passed away due to a weak heart at the age of 70. Witnessing my mother's behavior and her manipulative way to garespect and love from my father and brothers, I had no trust in relationship.

One day when the whole family was watching television and it happened that there was a scene on the mother wanting to die and the children were trying to stop her. Then I purposely said that if I were the child, I would take a chair and sat down to watch the mother jumped off and die. I had enough and I was so pissed off with my mother always threatening to die in front of me only.

My comment ended all my mother’s drama of threatening to die in front of me. I thought to myself like wow so easy to end her drama, which caused a lot of fear and suffering in me for countless years.

Living in constant fear had a bad impact on my health. My digestion and memory were bad and I could not remember things. Meat was hard for me to digest. To improve my health, I became a vegetarian at the age of 27.

My mother did not believe in education but I did. She disliked me more because I was sitting down to study and doing nothing else. She was actually laughing at me for wanting to further my studies after O levels. My health and memory were bad and hard for me to remember what I studied but I wanted a professional education. At my time many were taking accountancy or information technology. I had many friends taking part time accountancy courses while working. So, I followed the trend and completed my ACCA professional certification in 2002.

Back in 2009 when I had my first baby at the age of 37, I was a very anxious mum and a perfectionist, wanting to give my precious little baby boy the best care.

However, things did not happen the way I wanted.

I overexerted myself with many sleepless nights worrying about my baby, on top of the routine night feeding, burping and diaper changing. In addition, I experienced acute lower backache and was physically very weak years after childbirth.

Two days before my labour, my baby shifted his head slightly and I experienced continuous nerve pain on my lower back near the sacrum area and throughout my forty hours of long labour. Eager to care of my newborn baby, I neglected my own health. I did not strengthen my lower back with postnatal massage and belly wrap, or engage a confinement nanny to help.

After the birth of my two children, I realised that what I studied had no use at all in knowing about how to take care of my babies.

I did not know when my baby was crying for milk and how to get my baby to sleep. Taking care of my first baby was exhausting.

As my health weakened, I started to experience separation anxiety and depression for two years. It was then, when I was overwhelmed by my health challenges and emotions, that I realised no amount of reading and research could have fully prepared me for the experience of taking care of my children.

My key takeaways

Every child loves their parents and I believe that every child deserves to be loved. Even though my mother did not treat me well, I still tried my best to be an obedient child to her. Over the years I have learnt not to waste time trying to make someone like or acknowledge me and live my life to its fullest. Don’t live in someone’s else shadow.

Secondly, because of my personal postnatal experience, I understand the emotional and physical needs and challenges of modern mothers. I believe that every woman deserves to be well-supported in her journey to motherhood, and have her pregnancy and parenting choices respected.

Mothers need to be able to take care of herself throughout the journey.

It is critical for her to recover well from childbirth and to regain her physical and emotional strength, so that she is empowered to take care of her baby and family.

Having experienced a bumpy transition to motherhood, I decided to equip myself with knowledge and skills to help others regain their confidence and health after childbirth, and care and bond with their babies.

Conclusion

I hope my story will inspire you to realise that knowledge is important and it is never too early to get prepared. To prepare ourselves early so we don’t have to go through the painful experience to learn from our mistake.

You can connect with me through my facebook, Instagram and Linkedin and my links will be in the show notes.

I look forward to seeing you in my next episode where I will be sharing with you more tips.