More Than Motherhood: Writing Our Way Back to the First Mother

Growing up, I always admired my mother. I admired her strength, her beauty, her intelligence, and her sophistication. I remember being with her at Publix one day, standing in the checkout line, and blurting out, “Mommy, you’re so sophisticated.”

She wasn’t doing anything particularly elegant at that moment—just standing there as the cashier rang up our groceries. But I was about eleven, and I had recently learned the word sophistication. As soon as I understood it, I knew it described my mother perfectly. That day, in that ordinary moment, I chose to tell her how I saw her.

To me, my mother was a superhero. I loved her deeply. I believed that if I could grow up to be even a third of the woman she was, I’d still be a hell of a woman.

Like many daughters, I placed my mother on a pedestal. Being mothered by her made me want to become a mother myself. As a child, I assumed that becoming a wife and mom was simply what women did. But as I grew and came into my own understanding of agency and choice, I realized I didn’t want motherhood because it was expected—I wanted it because I longed to pass on the love I had received.

Over time, that desire became less about emulating my mother and more about discovering my own way of mothering—what it would look like to love, protect, and nurture from my own well.

The relationships we have with our mothers are often complex and nuanced yet also beautifully rich and deep. When we explore our connections with our mothers, our mother figures, and those whom we mother, we gain a deeper innerstanding of ourselves—and invite deeper healing and connection into the relationships that shape our daily lives.

Yet motherhood extends beyond the personal and into the elemental. It begins not just with our individual mothers, but at the source—with the First Mother: Mama Earth.

She is our original home and nurturer. The divine feminine energy that births and sustains all life.

I often return to her when I need to reconnect with my center. I’ll walk in the park, sit in my Grandma’s backyard, or hike a wooded trail. In those spaces, I can hear the Divine more clearly. I listen to the birds sing. I watch the wind move through the trees. I allow myself to be held—sometimes in the way my mother would, and sometimes in ways even more expansive. But always in the way I need.

For me, memoir writing is both a creative and spiritual act of reconnection—to memory, to meaning, and to Mother.

If this resonates with you, I invite you to join me on Mother’s Day weekend, Saturday, May 10, for the final session of my free memoir writing series: Crafting Your Voice and Style – Honoring the Stories of Motherhood.

Together, we’ll explore the emotional depth of our experiences, refine our voices, and learn how to bring our stories to life with vivid detail and raw honesty. Whether you’re writing about your own motherhood, your mother, or a transformative life event, you’ll leave class with a polished excerpt and the tools to keep developing your memoir with authenticity and soul.

But more than anything, this class offers a sacred space for healing, crafting, and remembering.

I hope to see you there. 🌱

Summer J. Robinson

Publisher. Filmmaker. CEO. Building Silver Bangles Productions, a multidisciplinary storytelling agency committed to telling and elevating stories that inspire Afrikan diasporic intergenerational healing. We do this through book publications, TV, Film, and Documentary productions, programming, and education.