Source: Johnny Louis/WENN.com / WENN
The late Betty Wright passed away last year on Mother’s Day which devastated her family, especially her children. Her daughter, Asher Makeba, sat down with Tatianna Mott and her mother Vivien Mott for the Take Each Moment podcast to discuss what her first year without her mother has been like and how she plans to spend her first Mother’s Day without her.
“On Mother’s Day, I plan to not be sad,” Makeba said. “We prepare to be sad. People brace themselves for their wedding day. Like, ‘it’s gonna be the best day of my life!’ So I’ve been bracing myself, but not for sadness.”
Makeba, who is also a mother of four, said she watched her mother’s decline as she accompanied her to chemotherapy. She added that she had also lost her father to cancer.
“Life consisted of me calling my mom and getting the kids to school, or me going by her house to learn something together,” she said. “So it’s like a culture shock for me. I’ve been in total shock since the day it happened. I was at every chemo visit with my mom. I was there to see the process. Not to mention five years before that I lost my father from cancer. And since December, I’ve been on chemo.”
Makeba added that while going through her own chemotherapy, as a preventative measure for a thyroid condition, she feels like her mother has been there every step of the way.
“I have been going through everything to lead me to this moment right here. I never would have imagined that I would have had to take chemo, but I had to go to chemo with my mom to know how to take chemo, and I feel like she’s been guiding me the whole way through.”
On the “Motherhood” episode, Makeba also opened up about her battle with postpartum depression, something many Black women go through in silence or unknowingly.
“With my first daughter, I definitely suffered with postpartum,” she said. “I didn’t realize what it was until I was already spazzing out on people, crying over things that used to make me happy. I just completely stopped doing things that gave me some kind of fulfillment. But I was still living in the house with my mother, and she was a great help to me with my baby.”
She said after she had her last child, her husband suggested that they reach out to a mental health professional when she began experiencing the symptoms again.
“After I had [my last baby] I had this happiness, and then all of a sudden, it was just like, I was a Debbie Downer again. And I’m like, ‘okay, I’ve seen this before. So what can I do different now?’ My husband was like, ‘yo, we have to talk to somebody, because this is not okay.’ So we reached out to a Christian mental health counselor online, and the funny part about it is it helped my husband in ways that he didn’t even know that it would help him with me on a day to day basis. It made our communication so much better just to tap into how I feel a little bit. You know, for a moment in time, he was like, ‘man, I just didn’t have a clue that you were going through so much, and how sad you really were.’ So I’m really grateful that we went to counseling. I don’t think that I would have gotten out of that and enjoyed my baby the way I do now, if I hadn’t gone to counseling.”
The “Motherhood” episode of the Take Each Moment podcast will be released on May 10, 2021 here.
