“The Weight Our Mothers Carried”

 

“The Weight Our Mothers Carried”

They grew up in a world that taught them to swallow their words.

“Sunga muromo.”

Hold your tongue.

Keep quiet.

Good women do not speak.

Good women do not question.

Good women endure.

Our African mothers walked through fire;

barefoot, soft-spoken, but carrying mountains on their backs.

A generation taught to suck it in,

to bury bruises beneath church hats

and hide heartbreak in the folds of their wrappers.

They lived in homes where silence was survival,

where a woman raising her voice was “too forward,”

where crying out was rebellion,

and rebellion was shame.

They were told to stay.

Stay because marriage is an altar you don’t walk away from.

Stay because your children need both parents.

Stay because “Murume ndiye musoro wemusha.”

The man is the head of the home.

Even when that head brought thunder.

Our mothers carried the weight of expectations

stitched into their skin like ancestral embroidery.

They endured:

Gender-based violence whispered away as “marital issues.”

Miscarriages mourned alone in dark kitchens.

Rape covered with cloth and silence.

Dreams deferred because education was “meant for boys.”

Labouring in fields from sunrise to moonrise,

only to serve dinner with trembling hands.

Bearing children with no time to heal their own bodies.

Kneeling to apologize for sins they did not commit.

Shrinking their souls to fit inside houses

that were too small for their courage.

They lived through poverty not just of money,

but of choice.

Their lives were designed for them

before they could even spell their own names.

Some wanted to be teachers.

Some wanted to be nurses.

Some wanted to be businesswomen.

Some wanted to run away and breathe.

But tradition clipped their wings and called it culture.

And yet;

they showed up.

For us.

For life.

For the homes that didn’t always love them back.

They protected futures they never got to experience.

They built children who became the women writing these words.

I watch my moms, my aunts, my big sisters,

their laughter carrying echoes of battles fought in silence,

their eyes telling stories their lips never learned to say.

The weight they carry is not just emotional,

it is generational.

It is spiritual.

It is the bruise and the balm.

And this poem, this page, this moment;

is for them.

To the women who raised us with broken backs

but unbroken spirits.

To the ones who whispered hope into our ears

even when their own hearts were bleeding.

To the ones who never had the luxury to rest,

to cry,

to choose,

to dream.

To the ones who taught us resilience

without ever knowing the word.

May they find healing in our voices.

May they find justice in our stories.

May they find softness in our generation

because tisu tichavhura muromo;

we are the ones who will speak.

And may they finally know

that their suffering was never failure.

Their survival was strength.

Their silence was not consent.

Their lives were a kind of poetry

the world was too blind to read.

This is for our African mothers; 

the women who carried us,

and carried everything else.