CAPE TOWN - A book filled with wisdom, loss, pain, sadness and struggle. Most of all, Motherhood Honesty is filled with lessons learnt and insights gained.
Twenty-seven women from three continents share their personal motherhood journeys. These stories allow mothers, those who wish to be mothers, and those who hope to understand mothers, to consider different perspectives and world views. Through the stories told here, we see motherhood as extraordinary and mundane; fulfilling and frustrating; infinitely simple and incomprehensibly complex.
Each demonstrating perseverance and resilience. We meet women pregnant as schoolgirls, women who mother alone, and those with loving partners, family and friends. We meet women who live in poverty, who did not have the opportunity for formal education, and who have been victims of societal and relational violence.
Some of the women who share their stories were well mothered and had powerful role models to follow as they became mothers. Others were poorly mothered, their mothers serving as anti-models of who they did not want to become as mothers. Through these stories, we see the work of motherhood, the sacrifice, commitment, joys and sorrows, as mothers strive to protect and nurture their children as best they can.
The book holds space for the possibility of creating societies that value women and girls, motherhood and children. It holds space for the possibility of societies that condemn gender-based violence and in which we all strive to understand and respect one another.
Motherhood Honesty by Victorine Mbong Shu and Prof Deborah S Ballard-Reisch is available on Amazon (R250)
Cape Times