The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far from the Tree: Reflections of My Mother and How She Influenced My Self Esteem
Originally written as Melanie Harris, April 3, 2020, WOE Magazine
“both” parts of me; my blackness and my whiteness. I did not fit either description of beauty in my eyes. I felt awkward and out of place. I didn’t see any beauty in myself.
I was jealous of dark skinned girls who could fully embrace their blackness and the strong, beautiful features that came with it. I felt like a watered down version. I have big hips, but my butt is kinda flat. I’ve been told I “talk like a white girl.” I’ve even been told that I’m not black enough to say the “N-word.” I struggled with this “black but not quite black enough” stigma for years and it deeply damaged my self esteem for a long time. I wanted so badly to have that thick, kinky hair and deep brown complexion like my black cousins, but that just wasn’t the case.
After about 22 years, I finally came to grips with that. My mom, who is half white and half black, married a black man and gave birth to a black daughter in 1988. Throughout the years, she raised me to be a proud black woman because even though we did not share the same skin tone, she understood the importance of me embracing my features and culture. She knew that despite our family’s multicultural background, the world would simply see me as black and she was right.
My mama constantly built me up; she told me I was beautiful in the mornings and oohed and awww’ed over my thick, curly hair. She wasn’t much of a hairstylist, but she made sure somebody with some experience got to my head! She pinched my plump little cheeks and told me how much she loved me everyday. You would think with all of that love and affection that my head would be the size of an air balloon, but it certainly was not.
I hated everything about myself.
I thought I was the ugliest child that ever lived.
Mama called this pic “Mel the Warrior” for how it captured my quiet, serious nature.
Despite constant offers and suggestions to be put in modeling competitions, and all of my mother’s friends always saying that I was just the prettiest little girl they had ever seen, their words only made me hate myself more. I used to wonder why their words meant nothing to me, despite the constant adoration. I hated looking in the mirror. I constantly compared myself to the other girls at school and often felt inferior.
But as I grew older, I started to understand why. As I matured, I got to know my mother as a woman instead of just “Mama.” I got a view into her troubled past and how it shaped her inner dialogue. She, too, struggled with self-love and confidence. She grew up in an abusive household with a violent, alcoholic father and an emotional void, manic-depressive mother. She hid from her parents, escaping her world through her love of sports. A true tomboy at heart with four older brothers, my mom found her identity in how well she performed on the field and not in her looks. She didn’t have aunties or female cousins to confide in and her own mother could barely pull herself out of the bed. My grandmother did not have the emotional bandwidth to pour into my mother and give her the love and support she so desperately needed.
My grandmother never told Mama she was beautiful. Matter of fact, according to the legend, my grandmother never even uttered the words, “I love you” to any of her children until right before she died in 2002. My mother led a life filled with emotional and physical abuse, neglect, and pain. I actually read a page from her diary where my mother said, “If I ever have a daughter, I will NEVER treat her the way my mother treats me. I hate her. I will be a much better mother than her.” She carried that pain and resentment throughout those crucial teenage years, and later went on to marry the first man who gave her a compliment the day after her high school graduation: my father.
Throughout her young adult life as she tried to grow as a woman and wife, my mom encountered more emotional and physical abuse from my father. She had jumped from one fire to the next, as she would say. He told her that she was ugly and worthless, that no one else would ever love her, and that she was nothing without him. He reaffirmed the hateful things that my grandfather would scream at her as he stumbled in from the bar each night, looking for someone to victimize. Then something wonderful happened; she found out that she was pregnant. She put all of her hopes and aspirations and dreams into this little life growing inside of her; she would finally have someone to love and someone to love her back, her life’s greatest wish.
After I was born, my mama kept true to the words that she had written in her diary back in 1984. She loved me more than life itself. I was truly her pride and joy. She finally got up the courage to leave my father in 1990 because she wanted a better life for me. She worked two and three jobs to keep the lights on and keep me smiling. Mama couldn’t afford to shower me with all of the fancy things that other families could, so she showered me with love. Nothing made her happier than to make me happy and she worked diligently to teach me everything she could. She dug deep inside of herself and created the words and actions to build me up as best as she knew how.
She didn’t always know the “right” words to say, but she just knew that she never wanted me to feel the way that her family made her feel. She never wanted me to doubt myself the way she did, never wanted me to feel unworthy or unloved. Unfortunately, our legacy of self-doubt carried on to her precious daughter despite all of her sweet words of love and affirmation. It wasn’t until I had gone through the awkward middle school phase and started defining myself as a woman in high school and college that I started to appreciate my mama’s support and love. I started to believe her, and believe in myself, a little bit more each day.
Over time, I started to look back and think of all the special times that we shared throughout my childhood and I am grateful. Even though I’m a grown woman and out on my own, my mom still sends little “I love you, just thinking about you” texts. She still tells me I’m beautiful. She’s my biggest fan, best friend, and closest confidante.
Now that I’m older, I’ve come to love and accept myself, my heritage, and my looks. I can appreciate those compliments and my heart holds on to them because I believe them now. I thank my mother for supporting me in a way that she was never supported and loving me in a way that she was never loved. As an adult, I try to return the favor and show her that she is loved and beautiful, too. I don’t take my happiness and sense of inner peace for granted; I know that it came from the love that my mother so selflessly gave to me, despite her not feeling very loved herself.
So after all of that, no, the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. Even with my mom’s loving and nurturing ways, I still battled with my self-esteem and felt unworthy for years, just like she did. I didn’t know how to do hair or makeup for a long time because she didn’t know how to. I wasn’t the most stylish or feminine until I got older and discovered YouTube. But she gave me something so much better than that; she gave me a love that helped me to grow in a new direction, in a new way.
She taught me to never deal with anything less than I deserved from a man. She helped me be strong, wise and independent. She made me tough and supported me in all my endeavors. She drove me to school plays, orchestra recitals and softball practices. She showed up when it counted. She gushed to her friends and coworkers about my achievements. Her pride for me never waivered. She did everything she could the best way she knew how while fighting her own battles. And for that, she will always have my undying admiration and appreciation. The strength of her love is what made me confident in what and who we are, as mother and daughter.
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