She is patient beyond reason, selfless to the point of exhaustion, and endlessly forgiving. She eats last, sleeps last, cries privately, and somehow continues to show up every single day with unwavering devotion. We hold mothers to impossible standards, asking them to be nurturing, selfless, endlessly patient — the closest thing we have to divinity. The relationship between a mother and child is treated as sacred, almost untouchable. Fathers, meanwhile, are rarely burdened with the same expectations. In many ways, we’ve been conditioned to expect their absence. The trope of the emotionally distant father and the mother who quietly endures everything has existed in our stories and media for generations.

My parents got divorced when I was pretty young, and I watched the two people I love most navigate what is probably considered one of the biggest failures in Indian society: the end of a marriage. But their experiences of it were diametrically different.

My dad had it much easier. Nobody was constantly questioning his character or his ability to be a good husband or father. There was no collective dissection of his choices, no quiet whispers about what he could have done differently. But my mom was put under a microscope. Suddenly, everything about her felt open to judgement — her parenting, even her personality. It was as though the failure of the marriage became hers to carry more visibly.

We ask our mothers to fit into this rigid box of what motherhood should look like. And once they are put into that box, they are expected to stay there. After the divorce, my mom poured her life into being just that: my mother. She rebuilt her life around raising this little human being, and only that. The jobs she chose, the places she travelled to, the decisions she made — everything centred around what would be best for me. And as a young girl, it was heartbreaking to watch her give up so much of herself.

Not only because I watched my mother slowly vanish and lose parts of the spark that once made her who she was, but because, for a long time, I genuinely believed that was what my own future would look like too. I thought womanhood, especially motherhood, inevitably meant shrinking yourself to make room for everyone else. That love would require a constant surrender of self. That adulthood for women was about learning how to accommodate everybody’s needs except your own. Because when we glorify maternal suffering too much, we unintentionally teach generations of women that pain is the price of love.

The time my mother truly began building a life for herself again was when I moved away for college. Until then, so much of her identity had been tied to being someone constantly responsible for holding things together. But once I left home, I started noticing small but significant shifts in her.

She began going out with her friends more often, not out of obligation, but because she genuinely wanted to. She travelled more freely, without the constant guilt mothers are taught to carry whenever they choose themselves. She took bigger and bolder risks in her career — leaps she had always wanted to take. And more importantly, she started investing in herself again: her hobbies, her happiness, and her time. There was a lightness to her I hadn’t fully seen before, as though she was slowly remembering the person she had been outside motherhood and survival.

My mother has always been extremely self-assured in who she is, but seeing her actively step off the cross we hang our mothers on and become the fullest version of herself — without shrinking or catering to anyone but herself — has been one of the most validating parts of my young adulthood. Being my mother’s daughter has always been a source of great pride for me, and the biggest compliment I have ever received is being told that I am the spitting image of her. Knowingly or unknowingly, she has always been my hero. Not in the “you’re so perfect, I want to be just like you” kind of way, but because watching her handle failure, the failure of a marriage, a career, or even the failure to meet people’s expectations, with such tenacity and strength has been the most inspiring constant in my life.

Because children do not need perfect mothers. They need human ones.

Here's more from Homegrown:

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5 Indians Tell Us How Their Parents' Separation Shaped Their Own Perceptions Of Love 

We Spoke To 6 Young Indians About Nepotism, Privilege, & “Earning It” In Modern India