Three-day book, part 2: The ideal place also shines into reality

The most typical matriarchal community should be the mummy group. I am talking about the offline kind. Before I became a mother, I used to run a small community coffee shop with my husband. The customers of this shop are almost all ordinary people living nearby, so I often see mothers drinking coffee together.

These mothers all looked a little tired, some were pushing strollers, some were carrying children. When one went to the toilet, the others helped to look after the children. The mothers drank coffee, and the children ate toast and drank BabyCino together.

Babycino is actually a small espresso cup filled with milk foam and a little warm milk. Our store is more fancy, with chocolate powder or colorful mini candies sprinkled on it, and sometimes a smiley face is drawn with chocolate sauce, and a marshmallow is given as a gift. Maybe because of this reason, there are more and more mothers' groups, and they gather more and more regularly.

When there are many people around, children always seem to behave better because they are not bored and there is always something to watch. When you are taking care of children one-on-one, to put it bluntly, the children really want to bother their mothers.

Parenting is hard work, but it seems that this hard work cannot be expressed. Everyone knows that their mothers are great since they were young, so if you complain a few words after becoming a mother, you will appear to be "ungrateful". The whole society has already praised you for being great, what else do you want?

The moms’ group is a safe space where you can complain. No one will judge you for not doing well enough. They will just say it’s okay. After everyone finished complaining to each other, they also breathed a sigh of relief: It turns out that I am not the only one who is in a mess. It turns out that being a mother is so difficult, and it’s not that I am so bad.

Later, I became a mother, and I often got together with a few friends whose children were similar in age to take care of children. At that time, the most common thing was that three mothers took four or five children to the indoor playground together. The children played together without the need for adults to accompany them. The mothers ordered a cup of coffee, sat in a daze, took a breath, and stood up again a few hours later to face the disordered battlefield of life.

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Let’s talk about a less typical group of mothers.

Many years ago, when I was an intern, I was stuffed into the Women's and Children's Hospital for several weeks.

There, I had a special experience that I still remember vividly: I helped my supervisor at the time do odd jobs in a support group for mothers whose babies had died.

This group is divided into six weeks, and the mothers get together for an hour and a half every week. One hour is group counseling led by my supervisor, and the other half hour is tea break and casual chat. We provide free tea and simple snacks. In the first five weeks, we talked about the five stages of grief and loss once a week: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In the last week, we got together and made a memorial jar while chatting. The memorial jar is an ordinary glass jar. Mothers put things in it that can help them remember their deceased children. Some are B-ultrasound photos, some are small head flowers or small towels bought for the baby, and some people put a family photo in it.

I was fortunate enough to participate in the entire process. The biggest feeling I had was that these women were still able to support each other, comfort each other, listen to each other, and give each other strength without hesitation in such a sad moment.

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At the end of this article, I would like to quote my previous comment:

@Moonleap

Only when mothers have the support of their own families can they take better care of their children, have their own space and time, and even be more likely to live out their own lives. Only when mothers live out their own lives and let their children grow up, will their children be more likely to live out their own lives~~

@Frances

It would be a good thing for women to raise children together. I feel that the support from each other would be much better than the current conventional family.

Thank you for your resonance.