Before you come after me and say that you can't have a role model who is your mum, let me explain to you why my mum is a great role model.
As a child, her parents were very distant towards her. She had two younger siblings, but because her father was a general and her mother was a social worker, they never took care of her and her siblings, so she had to.
Her mother always preferred my aunt (my mum's sister) to my mum, so my mum grew up resenting her mother for that. My mum had to make sure that my aunt and my uncle did their homework and all from when she was very young. She cooked for her siblings and her parents. She got good grades and was very talented at both gymnastics and ballet.
Her parents didn't get better, and it was very hard for her to grow up. The final straw came when my grandfather was sent to a small town in the middle of nowhere in France, where kids did drugs and smoked because there was nothing to do.
She had to spend high school there, in a town where everyone was either unemployed or working in coal mines. Where kids laughed at her because she didn't want to go to nightclubs or fool around on weekdays.
Anyway, she kept her good grades up, so she got to go to a good university in Paris. But just as she was finally set free from her horrid parents, a new piece of information came. My grandfather was sent to Berlin, so my grandmother would accompany him, but they didn't want to take my aunt or my uncle.
So my uncle went to boarding school and my mother, all of 17, had to take care of my aunt, 15. All by herself. In Paris.
After about a year, my mum's parents came back, so my aunt went to live with them again. My mum concentrated on her studies and ended up being recruited in a luxury hotel in Paris as the secretary to the director of the hotel.
InterContinental, I think.
Anyway, she worked there and had a decent salary. Her life was okay, and she was balancing work and a licence in Japanese (she's always been fascinated with Japan). Then she met a man.
This man seemed pretty great at first. They had a small romance until eventually, he proposed. She didn't love him as much as he loved her, but she didn't want to say no. So they got married. Quickly, my mum realised that she was pregnant. This unborn baby is now my older brother whom I love very much.
She gave birth to my brother, and started to notice that the man she married wasn't all perfect. He was lazy, and had no ambition. He wanted to leave Paris and go to a small town in Brittany where he could just accumulate small jobs with little pay.
Unsurprisingly, my mum did not want that.
So she divorced him and was granted the majority of my brother's custody. She raised him while working a lot as a single mum for around six or seven years. During this time, she left her position at InterContinental to go to a bank which had better working hours for her to take care of my brother.
This is where she met my dad.
I won't go into all the details, but they got married. My dad became an amazing stepdad to my brother (who, to this day, prefers my dad to his dad), and moved in with my mum and my brother. The perfect happy family.
They moved to the south of France, and my dad began his startup where he created keyboards with wood sustainably. My mum supported him, and she began her own business of Shiatsu in our home.
Then I was born.
She worked less so she could take care of me (and make sure my brother didn't get up to any shenanigans, he was always a troublemaker) and still supported my dad.
By this time, my brother was 16 or 17, and, after many ups and downs involving him going to live with his dad and then coming back to live with my dad and our mum, he was ready to go to college. He moved to Paris, and this is when my dad got a business offer in Hong Kong. I was four years old.
We moved within less than six months.
During all this time, my mum had to leave her job and start anew in Hong Kong. She had nothing, and had to work a horrible administration job in a small school in the middle of Hong Kong. Nearly three hours a day of transport. Average pay. She had to work during the holidays as well.
And all through that, I was breezing through primary school.
She ended up changing jobs a year before COVID, but then everything shut down. We moved to Singapore, and here again she had to start afresh (because, again, it was because of my dad's job that we moved here). She now works another horrible job at an international school where they sort-of exploit her (though it's better paid) and give her a massive load of work.
Throughout all of this, she still does many things at home. She's the one who cooks during the weekends. She's the one who plans a lot of things. She's now even investing in the stock market. She bought a house with my dad. When she was in France (even though my aunt and uncle live there), she's the one who sorted out all of my grandmother's funeral, despite having had a bad relationship with her and not living in France.
She stayed strong. She's always been strong.
Looking back, I have said many times that this person was my role model, or another. It never mattered. But perhaps for the first time, I realise that my mother is my true role model. She has had a crazy life, and still continues to raise me (which that, in itself, is a big job).70Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdGvowxbWIa
I love you, Mum.
I really do.
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