My Mother Abandoned Me, But I Want to Raise My Child with Love

Hello. Today, we are traveling to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, to meet Korvi Rakshand, who received the Magsaysay Award for providing free online education to children from impoverished backgrounds.

After completing his morning practice and meditation, Sunim departed from the accommodation at 5:45 AM and headed to Silchar Airport.

After a 30-minute drive, he arrived at the airport at 6:15 AM. Sunim expressed his gratitude to the staff member from Cachar Cancer Hospital and Research Centre (CCHRC) who provided the transportation.

“Thank you for driving us well for the past two days.”

After entering the airport, checking in luggage, and completing the check-in process, Sunim departed from Silchar Airport, India at 7:55 AM. On the plane, he worked on proofreading manuscripts and attending to other tasks.

After a one-hour and ten minute flight, the plane arrived at Kolkata Airport at 9:05 AM. To travel as economically as possible, a self-transfer flight ticket was purchased. This meant retrieving luggage and then checking it in again for the connecting flight.

After completing the departure procedures and waiting at the counter, Sunim departed from Kolkata Airport at 11:30 AM. Once the plane took off, he rested.

After a one-hour flight, the plane arrived at Dhaka Airport at 1:00 PM local time in Bangladesh.

Upon retrieving the luggage and exiting the airport, a wave of hot and humid air enveloped the body. Sunim then took a car to the accommodation.

After an hour-long drive through Dhaka city, he arrived at the accommodation at 3:00 PM. During the journey exploring Bhutan, providing emergency flood relief in the Assam region, and visiting the cancer hospital in Silchar, Sunim hadn’t had proper rest. With a swollen throat and feeling under the weather, he retired early for a much-needed rest.

As there was no Dharma talk today, I will share a conversation between a questioner and Sunim from the online Friday Dharma Q&A session held in Bangkok five days ago.

My Mother Abandoned Me, But I Want to Raise My Child with Love

“I am currently eight months pregnant. My concern is that since becoming pregnant, memories of childhood wounds have been resurfacing, causing me great distress. When I was young, my mother left us and our home. She has since remarried and is living with her new husband’s children. She reached out a few times, but I cut ties because I didn’t want to get hurt anymore. Now that I’m having a child of my own, I find my mother’s actions even more incomprehensible, and I often break down in tears, feeling sorry for my younger self who didn’t receive love. I don’t want to cause any emotional wounds to my child as a parent. How can someone like me, who didn’t receive a mother’s love, raise a child with love? What practices should I do to be a good parent?”

“When a dog gives birth and raises puppies, does it need to learn or practice how to raise them? Or does it happen naturally?”

“It seems to happen naturally.”

“When a cow gives birth to a calf and raises it, does it need training on how to raise calves? Or does it happen naturally?”

“It seems to happen naturally.”

“Does a mother cow raise her calf with intense love, or does she just raise it?”

“I’m not sure if it’s intense love.”

“Isn’t it more like giving milk when the calf wants to feed, and protecting it from other animals or people who might harm it? Something along those lines?”

“Yes, it seems that way.”

“Then, would a mother cow abuse her calf? Would she yell at it or hit it?”

“It doesn’t seem likely.”

“Let’s say a dog gives birth to six puppies. The six puppies are suckling, climbing on and off the mother, making her life difficult. Would the mother get irritated and bite the puppies?”

“It doesn’t seem likely.”

“A mother dog doesn’t suffer or cry out in distress whether she has two, three, or five puppies. There’s no method for intensely loving the puppies, nor is there a method for abusing them. She simply helps the puppies with what they need, like feeding them when they want to nurse. Love is helping with what’s needed, not ‘loving intensely’ – that’s desire.

Similarly, you weren’t hurt because your mother didn’t love you intensely. You were hurt when your mother got angry with you, when she fought with your father and then got irritated with you, when she hit you out of anger, or when she yelled at you. It’s not that the questioner was hurt because your mother didn’t carry you on her back or hold you in her arms. Squirrels raise their young, dogs raise their puppies, and cows raise their calves. Humans, being much more intelligent than these animals, naturally know how to raise a baby when they have one. When a baby cries from hunger, you naturally feed it; when it soils itself, you naturally clean it. Everything happens naturally. There’s no need for additional acts of intense love. Conversely, you shouldn’t hit a child for soiling themselves, or yell at them for breaking a dish. Children don’t know any better, so hitting them, yelling at them, or cursing at them is child abuse. Adults might feel a bit upset when someone speaks loudly to them, but for children, such loud voices can startle them and make them psychologically unstable. If a mother hits or yells at a young child, the child is traumatized, and those emotions can persist into adulthood. This is why some people tremble in fear when anyone raises their voice. If a mother constantly belittles a child with phrases like ‘you good-for-nothing’, ‘you can’t even study’, ‘you can’t do anything right’, the child’s spirit is crushed, and they may lack confidence even as an adult.

“So don’t love them excessively, don’t abuse them, just be there with the child. When they cry because they’re hungry, feed them. When they soil themselves, clean them up. When you go somewhere, don’t leave them alone but take them with you. That’s all you need to do. Expressions like ‘I love my child dearly’ are reactions stemming from a compensatory psychology for abuse one has suffered. It’s just a desire to be overly good to the child, but it’s not actually very helpful for the child. So there’s no need to worry at all.”

“Sunim, as you said, even animals take care of their own offspring. How could my mother abandon her own child and raise someone else’s children? I just can’t understand it.”

“In life, couples can sometimes have irreconcilable differences. If she only thought about the child, your mother would have wanted to raise you. But perhaps her relationship with your father was so bad that she felt she couldn’t live there anymore and ran away. Once she left, it might have been too difficult to live alone, so she met a man. As she got to know him, she learned he had children, so naturally, she would need to help raise the children in the house where she was living. How is that abandoning her own child to raise someone else’s? That’s just your perspective, but it’s not actually the case. Even when raising a puppy, if it suddenly runs away or follows someone else, and in the meantime another puppy comes in, you raise that puppy, don’t you? To view this as ‘Why are you abandoning my puppy to raise someone else’s?’ is too subjective. Your mother left because she felt she couldn’t live in that house anymore. Although you were her child, once she left, she couldn’t raise you. When she went to another house, even though the children there weren’t hers, she cared for them as an adult would. From my perspective, you’re thinking about this too subjectively. As a young child, you might have thought that way and been hurt. But now that you’re an adult, looking back, it’s not such a big deal, is it?”

“I think I’m starting to understand what you’re saying.”

“You’re living comfortably now, but what if your husband was violent every day, or you were sexually abused, or you were experiencing some unbearable suffering that you couldn’t tell anyone about? It would be good if you could run away with the baby, but what if you couldn’t? Might you not run away alone, leaving the baby behind? Looking back as an adult now, you can see that’s what happened. Things that are impossible don’t happen. This happened because it was possible. Your mother didn’t leave because she hated her child, but because her own life was too difficult. How much must it have hurt your mother to leave her child behind? From your young perspective, it was very disappointing, but as an adult, you can understand it to some extent now, can’t you? Your mother’s life was too hard at that time. How difficult must it have been for her to abandon her child and run away? Although I feel somewhat disappointed, when I think about the life of this woman who was my mother, there are aspects I can understand.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“It’s not right to approach this thinking, ‘My mother did wrong, but I’ll forgive her.’ First, you need to deeply understand your mother’s situation. It’s not forgiveness that’s needed, but understanding. When you deeply understand your mother, the wounds in your heart will all heal. It’s because you don’t understand your mother that the resentment in your heart won’t go away. So try praying like this while bowing. ‘Mother, I’m sorry. I didn’t understand you. At that time, you were only about my current age, how difficult must it have been for you to abandon your child and run away like that? Now that I’m an adult and look back, I can understand your situation. Mother, it was so hard for you, wasn’t it? I’ve always resented you without knowing this, but I won’t resent you anymore.’ If you open your heart like this and understand your mother first, the resentment inside you will dissolve. That’s how you should resolve your feelings about your mother.

Don’t try too hard with your child, just raise them normally. You might have inherited that temperament from your mother, so you might get angry and irritable with your child. When life gets tough, you might even want to give up and run away like your mother did, but as long as you don’t go that far, you don’t need to think about loving your child excessively. Just feed them, change their clothes, clean up after them, play with them, that’s enough. If you worry too much about raising your child, it can actually be detrimental to the child. So just raise them comfortably.”

“Thank you. After hearing what you’ve said, I now see how I should raise my child. However, it still seems difficult for me to understand my mother’s situation. Nevertheless, I will try my best to understand her circumstances.”

Tomorrow, we plan to visit the JAAGO Foundation, run by Korvi Rakshand, who received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for providing free educational services to underprivileged children in Dhaka through an online education system.