There are days when being a mother seems like too tough a burden to bear.
Kate Langbroek has shared a heart-wrenching Mothers’ Day story about the days when being a mother is almost too hard to handle.
In today’s Sunday Style, the television and radio personality tells of the moment her son Lewis, who had been diagnosed with leukaemia, was wheeled into surgery for a biopsy to investigate why he had gone blind in one eye.
The 49-year-old recounts the terror that overcame her at the thought that Lewis might lose his battle with cancer, and her despair at feeling that this was a thing she could not bear – that being a mother, in that instant, was simply too hard, too painful, too much.
“It was the day I wished I was never a mother. Because I could not bear it,” she writes of the 2010 incident. “It was a dreadful day. Truly dreadful. Full of dread.”
Langbroek also tells of the realisation, as she placated her frightened son in his hospital bed, that she must bear it.
“I was his mother. And because he was frightened, I could not be,” the Kiis FM drive show co-host writes.
“I thought I could not bear it, but I did. Because I could not panic and I could not run. Because I was his mother. And because he was frightened, I could not be.”
She says she realised what so many other mothers have realised before her: that sometimes, when it comes to your children, there is no choice but the unbearable. That being strong for your child when you have no strength left for yourself is just what being a mother is.
This year, after two years in remission, Kate’s 11-year-old son will go on a class trip to Italy. He will break his mother’s heart all over again, in a different way. And he will continue to do so throughout his life.
But, as Kate so wisely says: “I am a boy’s mother, and doing that job well means knowing how to let go.
“I did not know that when I took on the role. I had not thought it through. But now it is upon me, I am performing to the best of my limited, but infinite, abilities.”
Read more:
Motherhood is a continual process of letting go.
I struggle with motherhood every single day.
‘Today, we remember the mothers whose children are not here.’
14 hard truths about motherhood nobody tells you while you’re pregnant.
What’s the hardest day you’ve ever had as a mother?
Top Comments
When my premature twins were in NICU for 3 months people used to say "I don't know how you do it" (I also had a 3 yo son and travelled an hour each way to visit them) and sometimes I'd wonder myself, but you just do because you're their mum and nothing else is more important. And you get your strength from that thought and pass it on to the little ones struggling for their lives who need you.
I had a extremely similar experience. My twins were in nicu 91/2 weeks prem with 1 starting primary school the 2nd getting ready for preschool no car & had to travel over an hour each way by train to see my twins & be back before 3pm. I also had people ask things like how do you do it?
It's one of those situations that no matter what you just do it without thinking twice!
Kate is amazing. I drove past the kid's hospital on the way to the mother's day fun run this morning and said a special blessing for the mums there today. My child was seriously ill as a baby and I still remember a friend saying to me, "How can you bear it?", and I replied, "Because I have to and she needs me".