Week 6 - Yufei Liu

After reading "My mother not my mother" written by Professor Valverde, I learned that things seem to be unfair and the world may seem cruel to us when we were younger. However, after finding out about the reason for certain actions, things will be much clearer when we learn to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. In this case, in the narrator's point of view, her mother abandoned her for a few years because she was in love with a married man with two kids and ended up having a child with him. She was young and naive so she felt like she was not ready to take care of the child and discipline the child. However, the narrator's hatred towards her mother slowly gets diminished after she finds out why her mother was not always there for her in the beginning. Now she understands that even though she is not on the same page with her mother sometimes, they are still connected in a way that both of them went through difficulty dealing with the past. The narrator's self growth and her relationship with her mother touched me. Although I am lucky to have a close relationship with my mom, I feel that there is always some distance between us. Especially after I decided to study abroad alone in the United States after graduating from middle school. My mom has told me that she regretted sending me so far away from her. But I felt like i was purposely trying to get away from my family to have the freedom I have always craved (my parents are very strict). Now that I am a college student and grew so much mentally and emotionally, I can understand my mom a lot more. I miss the years we could spent together if I never decided to live abroad by myself. I often think about what kind of person I would become living with her and learning from her teachings. Maybe I didn't have to go through the unnecessary hurdles to get to where I am today.

Stillufsen, H. (N/A). Rose Hill Design Studio.

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