💔 Amanda Keller's Heartbreaking Reflection On Motherhood

“Being the mother of a son is like someone breaking up with you really slowly.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So you alluded that we're going to the blood zones
I've got. Well, that's what I like to call it,
because we've got the Kleenex here for you. And do
you want to put on when don't? Don't? Don't? Oh,
I don't. Well, this just gets it out of your sister. No. Well,
if my sons were listening to this, they'll be horrified.
But I listened. I read a piece that Mere Friedman

(00:22):
wrote a couple of weeks ago, and it's she has
you know how I've spoken recently about when Liam turned
eighteen and how the rush for motion I had. Oh,
can you turn the music off? It's not going to
help me turn it off? Thanks you. I started the
blo started talking about how it feel my own fingernails
back as I talked, okay, breathe, and she just articulated
so brilliantly what it's like to be a mom of

(00:43):
a of a boy who grows up to be a man.
And I'll just read you some of it if I can,
if I can get through it, she said, being the
mother of a son is like someone breaking up with
you very slowly, because she had recently seen a movie
called Otherhood and that's where those movies are from. When
she said the movie is supposed to be about boys
growing up, moving out of home, and it's supposed to
be a comedy, but she said it examines what it

(01:05):
means to be a mother of a son who's no
longer a boy, no longer your boy, but a man.
And when she spoke about it recently and Mama mia
out loud, look at you. You're getting You've got boys too, Yeah,
you've got two boys. She said that there were audible
gasps of recognition and yelps of pain in the room.
And she spoke about this, and she said that if

(01:28):
our boys will grow up and grow away and break
up with us, and if they do, oh god, this
is a heart. If they do, we've done our job correctly,
and we have. That's what you want your kids to be,
to be, to grow up and leave you. That's what
our job is. But it's so hard. And she said
here that there are many crazy things about being a parent,

(01:51):
and one that definitely wasn't in the brochure is the
way you don't actually parent one person or one child.
Your parents very differently have a newborn, a baby, a toddler,
a preschool schooler, a primary age kid, a preteen, an adolescent,
a full blown teen, a young adult, and then an adult.
And they all answer to the same name, and they
all call you mom. And you never notice. I can't

(02:14):
even read it on Braith. You never notice the inflection
point where one morphs into the next. You never get
to now I've got a snot okay, this happens as well,
She says. You never get to properly say goodbye to
all the little people who grow up, because you don't
notice the growing and the changing. Except when Facebook sends

(02:37):
you those bloody memory reminders that make me cry, she said,
because it's like showing me the face of someone I
could never see you again. No, and she says, she's
crying as she writes it, And she knows that it's indulgent,
and she knows it's almost insensitive, because if you've experienced
the loss of a child, they would give anything to
feel this exquisite pain of missing a healthy child. And

(03:00):
she says, while I know they love us, their lives
no longer spin around us, they don't no longer have
their mother as their main access. We are not the
sun around which they spin. It'd be very weird if
it were, she said, And I know that logically. And
she goes on to say how great it is to
have tall people in the house. It can get down
things from talk cupboards, and she says, it's an ongoing
wonder to me that I grew one of my best

(03:21):
friends in the world, one of the best men I
know in my own body. And I just thought that
just sums up exactly how it is to have a job.
I'm thinking a lot about this. How you bet you
you know how to physically love a little baby, but
when they're taller than you and their giant units, how
you can express your love for them as you watch

(03:42):
them go? And it makes me miss my own mum
because she she graciously let me leave home and I
never said thank you, and she's not here anymore. So
I thought, just me and nailed that absolutely. And I'm sorry,
I've beloved. I just wanted to say, isn't this a
great piece of writing? Are you're all smoke? It's just

(04:05):
smoke on the sardines. Alright, let's all take a deep breath,
all right. And if I've made you cry this morning,
I'm sorry, but it's you know, Okay, take a deep breath,
and let's move on. Catch Jonesy and Amanda's podcast on
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