The greatest love of all is cultivated and grounded, cured by individuals we both literally and figuratively grow to look up to. For me, those caretakers and caregivers would be my parents.
My parents absolutely loved us — all five daughters and two sons. My parents made countless sacrifices and difficult selfless choices so that I and the rest of my siblings could live a better life out of poverty, hunger, and homelessness.
But there was always something different about their love to their daughters. It never needed to be said out loud or acknowledged. It was just always there.
I still recall the haunting disappointment when I first realized it.
Yes, my parents loved their daughters, but they loved us just enough to ensure that we grew up to be good people. They loved us just enough to protect us from the dangers of the world. They loved us just enough to make sure we became good wives someday, but above all, they loved us just enough to protect their own hearts.
The moment my sisters and I were born, my parents already understood and knew that we would one day leave their sides, their home, their protection, and their love for another family.
It was no secret.
I was in my second year of college when I attended my first conference that solely focused on the Hmoob womxn experience. We were all sitting in a circle discussing the different forms of oppression that Hmoob womxn face in the community and in society when one of my peers finally said it out loud, “I know my parents reserve their love for me because I’m a Hmoob daughter.”
It then struck me.
That’s what that feeling was: “reserved love”.
My parents loved us just enough. They reserved their love because they knew that we would not stay with them forever. It was the son’s duty to take care of the parents. Not the daughters and so it was made very apparent to me early on in my youth, that they reserved their love for their daughters.
My mother knew that she would have to let me go one day and so she would tell me to toughen up because she would not always be there for help me. And so I rarely felt the embrace of my mother even though I craved it.
My father, on the other hand, never let me forget that I would be the wife of another. He would continuously state, “When you get married…” until it was instilled in me.
But I cannot and should not blame them. They were only doing it to protect us and their own hearts.
And yet I cannot help but imagine what it would have been like if my mother had embraced me just a little bit more. Would I then know how a mother’s embrace truly felt like?
What if my father did not reference me as someone else’s wife before I was married or if he did not constantly remind me to find a good man to marry? Would I be able to have a greater autonomy while growing up?
Can you image?
What would it have felt like if my parents did not reserve their love for us?
