“Mother is the name of God on the lips of children.” Brandon Lee in The Crow

This quote strikes quite a chord, or at least should do. In the film, “The Crow” says this phrase to a mother who’s hooked on drugs and doesn’t care properly for her daughter or herself for that matter. When Brandon says this, it’s a wake up call, not one that tells her that she should be worshipped by her kid but that for any infant the first figures they venerate are their parents. Also parents are the first humans for kids to relate to, this means they are the first example or model with which kids relate and to which they aspire. So parents should be very careful with their kids lives because their problems and mistakes could easily become reflected in the lives of their kids, even when they’re adults.

But I think I’ve been fortunate. One day I got thinking about why my life´s a good life, how I´ve come to a situation that really is what I am. I realised that I´m in my life, not one that´s been made for me by other people and I think I´ve got my mum to thank for that.

If she hadn´t loved me the way she did, I wouldn´t have this good life. I wouldn´t have a relationship with my girlfriend where I feel free, trusted or loved. Even if I´ve got different beliefs and ideas to my mum I can still be loved by her and love her. Even though I’ve moved away she still loves me because she values the freedom of my humanity. What my mum showed me was a love that jumps over our story, our blood-ties and even beliefs. Her love means that I´m not an extension or a carbon-copy of her life nor do I feel like I should repay some debt that I owe her, because she gave me unconditional love, not something bartered or traded.

My mum’s love is an open hand that doesn´t grasp nor reject, push or pull me, instead, because she allows me freedom, I return to it willingly because it’s made of trust not fear. Because of this I think she’s made the world a better place and even if I´m not a Christian in my beliefs I´m a Christian in my heart because of her and that can only be good. When I see my mum I know what it means to have Christ in your heart because she follows something that´s essential and true and because of that example I have a life that´s essential and true for me.

I’m not saying I’ve had a perfect upbringing because it hasn’t always and my parents have in some ways projected their problems and mistakes onto my upbringing. But there has been something different about my life that most other people don’t have or won’t bother looking for, I’m not just another “product” created by the factory of society.

And because of this I exist in a situation that gives me freedom. Not necessarily freedom to do what I want, any society can do that, but freedom to be what I am, from soul to skin, the freedom that counts and many don’t encounter.