Photo provided by Jai’Den Smith
Jai’Den Smith
Managing editor
March is designated as Women’s History Month and for many, celebrating historical icons is how this month is recognized. For me however, my mother is and will remain the most impactful woman in my life. This fact becomes more and more clear to me each day.
It is a realization I often find myself rediscovering. As a young woman, it is easy to look at the women who seem to have it all together. The beautiful, the intelligent, the powerful. But when I look to them to aid in my navigation of my own identity, I’m often left disappointed.
But my mother, the woman who remains consistently kind, intelligent, powerful, and brave, has never left me short of amazement.
Besides literally giving life to me, my mom is my source of air. I often find myself in college struggling. Struggling to know myself, struggling to know right from wrong, struggling to understand my circumstances.
One phone call with my mother makes any crisis seem so small.
Being snatched away from all that I know and living in a completely different state, it is so easy to forget who I am.
That is why in college, you need someone who never could forget. Someone to remind you of your strengths, aid your weaknesses, and make you aware of the growth in yourself.
Who better to tell my story than my mother? She literally has been a witness from the beginning. She was the first to tell me what I’m capable of. The bond between mother and daughter is so sacred, because she is one of the only people you will have in your life who won’t be intimidated by your wins.
All of my accomplishments, she views as her own. All of my failures, she doesn’t hold against me. She is the first to tell me how beautiful I am, and the last to expose my flaws.
As life fluctuates and I navigate through the many struggles that come with being a 20 year old- and I search life for my people and the places I will belong- my mother remains the most consistent rock in my life.
The times when I struggle to know my own identity, who I am and what I’m made of, she never forgets. In my worst moments and biggest breakdowns- she remains unmoved.
My mom had me young, she was only 21 when she gave birth to me. Motherhood was new to her and like many, she looked to her community to help raise me.
At the time, I was only 3 or 4 years old and my mom had a best friend who’d she let babysit me. They had met in the first grade and remained close ever since.
I remember telling my mom I didn’t like how her friend treated me. She was often rough and wouldn’t want to help me get out of my car seat or let me play with the magnets on her fridge.
Needless to say, I’ve never seen her again. My mother never brought her up and now it being 17 years later, she has still never been around our family again.
It is now an ongoing joke in my family, we all laugh about how my mom did not hesitate to cut off her long-term friend for being mean to her daughter. This story is pretty much the basis of me and my mom’s relationship. She’s the first up to bat for me and my first lifeline when I’m in need.
I’ve had so many situations happen to me in college that I know people would never call their mothers for. It’s the opposite for me. I can call and tell her anything, and I do. No matter what: men, friendships, academics, it doesn’t matter.
My first semester of college, I failed a class. I was devastated. I was too embarrassed to admit it to her. Time had gone by and I thought I got away with it. She had never asked or ever brought it up and I had been lying about my performance my freshman year. A semester later while she was in my P.A.W.S. account, she saw it.
She called and asked me if I had failed a class. My heart thumped out of my chest and I left my dorm to continue the conversation, preparing for the verbal punishment I would receive through the phone.
To my surprise, she told me that it’s okay. That happens and feeling shame about it will only lead me to fail more and to own up to my academic mistakes.
I was so surprised. Her words comforted me in a way she’d never know. I didn’t even know I needed to hear those words myself. I was carrying shame from the failure and hadn’t even realized it. Her words helped me to forgive myself and accept all that would come with my four years in college.
As I grow older and step in womanhood, my admiration for her only grows. She’s an amazing wife to my father and even more attentive mother to my younger siblings than she was too me. I love that I am a witness to her growth from a young mother to a respected woman and I hope I can become half the woman she is.
And so I honor and celebrate you, Kenyatta Smith, aka my mom!
According to www.womenshistory.org, Women’s History Month began as a local celebration in Santa Rosa, California. The Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women planned and executed a “Women’s History Week” celebration in 1978. The organizers selected the week of March 8 to correspond with International Women’s Day. The movement spread across the country as other communities initiated their own Women’s History Week celebrations the following year.
In 1980, a consortium of women’s groups and historians—led by the National Women’s History Project (now the National Women’s History Alliance)—successfully lobbied for national recognition. In February 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the Week of March 8th 1980 as National Women’s History Week.
Subsequent Presidents continued to proclaim a National Women’s History Week in March until 1987 when Congress passed Public Law 100-9, designating March as “Women’s History Month.” Between 1988 and 1994, Congress passed additional resolutions requesting and authorizing the President to proclaim March of each year as Women’s History Month. Since 1995, each president has issued an annual proclamation designating the month of March as “Women’s History Month.”
