Before I was your Mother
Before I was your mother,
I was a girl,
who had no idea of anything
outside of pain and sorrow,
a girl who did not know
how to be a girl.

Before I was your mother,
I was a girl
beaten for not being
what my mother
wanted in a girl.

Before I was your mother,
I was a woman
beaten
for not being what
a man wanted in a wife,

Before I was a mother,
I was lost for so very long,

Before I was your mother
I was a woman
who did not know
how to be a woman.

When I became a mother,
in your eyes
I was not a woman,
I was a role
needed to be played.

Before I was a mother
I did not know
what being a mother was

I tried on many different things.
while being your mother
I struggled
to be a girl,
to be a woman.

I struggled to be.
You struggled against
my becoming a woman,
you struggled against
my becoming a girl.
You struggled against my love,
punishing me for not being
what you wanted me to be.

When I became your mother
I was beaten with words, with anger,
With rejection for not being
What a child wanted
in a mother,

I struggled against my love too,
I was never me.

together we created
an unhealthy way
of treating each other,
a pattern that did us
more harm than good.

Patterns designed to destroy
all we were working for
I fought to keep us together
This almost destroyed us

In becoming a woman
I stood up
to the girl, the woman
in you
and said no more.

That hurt you,
it was not intended to cause harm,
it was intended to break
the hurtful pattern
we were in.

Before I was your mother,
I was nobody,
being your mother
gave me purpose,
a place to start.

Mj LeBlanc, 44, is a Spruce Grove mom of three adult daughters ages 27, 26 and 20, and a 24-year-old son. “My children are my world, they are my profession, not in the way society sees a profession,” says MJ, who has found bliss in the form of her second husband who has helped her achieve inner peace. “I am learning how to be an individual, separate from the mother, I am discovering the Goddess within, the woman I always was, yet put on the shelf for later study. Life would have been fuller had I had not put her on the shelf for so long.”