This is the story of a mother who was brought up by a strong woman that taught her that the most important part of motherhood is being a mother, first, last and always. This is challenged when her third child has complications at birth and ends up in a wheelchair. While she accepts her situation and circumstance she soon realizes that the strength she posses is not one that is innate in all parents. After her husband gives up his parental rights to all three of the children she finds out just how strong she must be in order to be the mother she knows she can be. Finally she is able to look at the cards she was dealt and accept that this is her life for a reason and no matter what the challenge she will continue to be a wonderful mother because that is what she knows to be.
DI/ Female- The Hand We're Dealt
- I have never been one for handouts. My momma use to say that a woman with her hand out begging is woman that could be using that hand to fill out an application for a job. (Smiles) My momma was a hard working woman. She grew up in a time when, if you was black and you was healthy you worked, and you worked hard. She always played cards on the weekend. It was the one thing that she did for herself when we were kids. Always used the saying “You gotta deal with the cards you’re dealt.” (Smile) We knew what that meant. Sometimes you have a winning hand and sometimes you have to look at your hand and wonder what to do with it? Keep it? Throw it in? Make some changes? My momma was always good for a card game scenario in out house. There were seven of us in the house: me, my momma and my five baby brothers and sisters. Yeah, my momma raised all of us on her salary as a cleaning woman and she never begged from no one and we never knew we were poor. (Smile) I loved my childhood. So when I saw that in her everyday for my entire life I knew that I was never going to take a hand out. I was never going to not have a job and I would never let my children see me as anything but what I saw my mother as, my hero. Do you have a hero? Nowadays these kids admire the football player and the singer on TV and it always makes me wonder, what aren’t your parents doing to make you look past them to someone else for your hero? Just doesn’t make sense to me, but my kids tell me “Momma things are different now then when you was our age.” I guess things have changed; things have definitely changed.