After celebrating Mother’s Day this year, it has been a beautiful time to remember both what it means for me being a mother and having still a mother of my own. Not just the latest events or happenings in my family, but also how I became a mother, what all these years of being a mother (now almost 29 years) meant for my personal development, but also, what kind of mother I always wanted to be.

Quite honestly, when I was younger, I always told anyone who would ask me what I wanted to do and be in the future, that I would never have kids and almost certainly would never get married. I could think of having a boyfriend (that came naturally a bit later) but with the family business, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with being a mom. Right up until one of my jobs as a teenager was babysitting. Mind you, this was not my first, second, or third choice – naturally.

My early jobs had nothing to do with being a mom. I worked at a videothek (video shop) and at the time (pre-Internet and pre-TV rentals), you had to go to a video shop to be able to watch porn. And I guess I had such a turn and accusing look on my face whenever someone would ask for this special black book (where the porn videos have been listed) that no one ever rented one on my watch!

Catering at a huge luxurious company was also a job I did and it was by far the best paid. They always hired me to be on site first and do all the decorations, which I loved. We did events in circus tents, in huge old Victorian villas and on the lawn of politicians or TV personalities. I loved to work there but the hours were horrendous. As I started at about lunchtime on a Saturday, I was up till nearly lunchtime on Sunday, till all was done and packed. Most of my colleagues were drinking champagne and eating the dinner leftovers, but I just wanted to get home and back to homework. So I needed to find something that would be easy and pleasant and did not involve staring down potential sex video watchers or being on my feet for 24 hours…

I had to get another job that was easy and I accepted, that it would be paid less. But as I read the advertisement, I thought that looking after sleeping babies would be the job, since they did not want to give me more than $5 an hour, (I assumed that the baby I was sitting must be asleep 😉 So at an age were others seek to go into jobs that pay well and are exciting and adventures, I got into babysitting. But thanks to my mum, she financed my studies and I did not really have to work, I guess it was more of a symbolic gesture that I wanted to show her that I was doing something additional to my studies.

However, it was the job I first learned to really appreciate children and something in my heart opened and for the first time in my life, I could imagine to actually have kids one day myself. (and they came much sooner than planned or imagined!)

In the new babysitting job, it was different from my imagination, my job to put them to bed, which was a first but lasting impression of how wonderful and sweet it can be to spend time with kids. (They had been 5 and 8 years old) Bedtime stories had been sweet, but talking with them afterwards about it, had been so enlightening. Of course, they had all the questions in the world, as it kept them from having to go to bed.

But I loved to talk to them and to be reminded to see the world and the books we were reading through their eyes. Nothing is better than to see the world through the eyes of an innocent child. The questions, the answers, all of it is so easy. Nothing is clogged up yet with bad experiences or fears. They are open and so self-evident.

My life as a mum will never end. That is the way it is, but I’m not any more primarily a mum, since both my children grew into beautiful adults. So I was thinking about mothers in general, how being a mum changed me. It was when I was pregnant with my daughter, I was reading about nutrition—and it is now been 29 years since I started to buy organic food. So much has changed since I first traveled to find an organic farmer and bought his produce in a little farmyard. Now, you can buy organic food in all food stores in every village.

I also started to think and act much more in a way of what kind of world do I want my child to grow up in and further down the line, what kind of world do I want my children and their children and their children’s children to live in.

One thing I learned is that each generation needs its own unique skills to manage their unique problems. Each generation will move forward, what once was progressive thinking on my part, is now the new normality and so the cycle goes on. We are here for a certain amount of time and can only give our best (raising our children, taking care and standing in our responsibility to the problems that we face, innovate and move forward, work on a better world, a better life, a better tomorrow for ourselves and for everyone that comes after us).

So as a mother, and as a sister and as a daughter, we have a call to involve, to take us and all after us seriously, and we’re not just raising the next generation and encouraging them, we also have our soul’s calling to do our best in everybody’s interest to move forward as a society.

I just got back from a wonderful break on the beautiful Greek island of Corfu. It is a magical place and my husband and I had a wonderful time together. The Island is covered in the most wonderful agent olive tree forest that dates back hundreds of years. We enjoyed a wild trip and an even wilder thunderstorm, crossing the big mountains in the north of the Island in our small little Mini Cabriolet. It felt, at times, like our roof was going to give in and we would be exposed to Nature.

We have been putting our feet into the crystal clear turquoise water in the south of Corfu, to the sound of the waves at our feet and birds above us. A singsong of sounds that places the most restless souls at ease (and us at pure tranquility).

The only downside of this holidays made me think so much of another mother. I’m talking of course of the only mother I did not mention here yet – Mother Earth. What a privilege to live and enjoy life on mother earth. And what a shock we had, when we saw that the rubbish was piling sky high up in Corfu.

We have been informed, that they have a rubbish burning place, but it is not able to cope with the rubbish they produce. It has been planned to build a new site on the small part of the Islands in the south, were all the Corfuaner live. Even if the north would be so much bigger and more suitable for it. But the North is where all the villas are and the rich people of the island live. So there was no way they will let that happen. So since no one was willing to accept a waste incinerator, rubbish is piling up now to an extent where it is saddening and obvious that the paradise that once inspired the great Gerald Durrell to his much loved, delightful novel “My Family and Other Animals” will now be covered in garbage.

Although I’m very aware that the waste and rubbish problem is a complex theme, not just on the tranquilent island of Corfu, and it’s not just for the people of Corfu island to tackle, it needs those future minds to come up with great new, innovative ideas – thought by minds that somewhere developed into outstanding people, raised by mothers. So, in the name of a mother that sees innovative, outstanding minds all over our great planet, a great thank you to all mothers, who raised their children in the best way they could.

I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a mother, becoming a mother, being a daughter and son, inspired by their mothers and honoring and respecting Mother Earth. She really needs our respect and our ability to move forward with open and most of all, loving and outstanding minds.

Much love as always,
Carollyne

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