My Mum´s Golden Self-Empowerment Rule
Self-Empowerment comes in all shapes and forms.
It can come from teachers, books, life events, tragedies and pleasant surprises; it can come from strangers and from the person next door. It can also come as a surprise, from where you least expect it.
I grew up with a tough mum. Hard as nails, demanding, no-patting-on-the-back love style; doing the solo parenting job the same way Jesus held the cross - suffering, in plain sight; not making an effort to hide it.
Life in Portugal was equally tough - back then, like today, yet different -, and huge waves of emigrants kept pouring out from the country. Those were the post-25th of April - aka the Carnation Revolution - years; the promising and blurred eighties; everyone was trying to figure out how to survive - a non-optional skill - and to thrive, optional and not often adopted.
Portuguese fled the country in search of jobs, a better life for their family, hope of a future.
My dad was one of those hope-searching souls.
We saw him once or twice a year, arriving on a cloud, like Santa Claus, with bags filled with chocolate and the excitement of novelty.
Meanwhile, my mum stood alone, in the trenches of daily life, raising two girls in an under-dog environment flooded with drugs, criminality, a melting pot of nationalities and social issues, and danger.
She struggled. Did her best.
Like every mother, she had flaws and qualities. She handed me darkness and light. Did what she could with what she was, knew, and had.
On Sundays, the day when me and my sister were allowed to eat sugar, we asked for a cake.
- Please, mum; bake us a cake.
- ....- (Silence)
- Come on! That moist orange cake with a layer of "chantilly". - We insisted, offering details.
- I won´t. I have more important things to do than wasting time on baking. Sugar isn´t good for you, anyway.
- We really want, and deserve, a cake. - We´d keep working on it, in unison, an unexpected Greek chorus composed of two otherwise beligerant infants.
Notice the intentional use of the word "deserve".
Kids are natural manipulators - in the best and in the worst ways.
We knew we deserved a treat and we used the meritocracy principle of our household in order to put extra pressure on my mum.
We were good kids. We behaved in kindergarten; we obeyed (mostly); ate our veggies and boiled hake with a splash of olive oil.
Me and my sister, on our kitchen table
We kept pushing it, and pushing it, not knowing if we´d en up eating cake or a good old-style beating.
- Because we deserve it, mum. Please, bake us a cake.
When my mum felt we were unmovable in our desire, she´d drop the bomb:
- Do it yourselves.
- But, mum, we don´t know how to do a cake. We´re children. - The masters of manipulation stroke again.
- If you don´t know it, you can learn it. - She burst at us, indicating the obvious.
- We´re not able to do it. Why don´t you do it? You´re the mum. - We kept pressing against the wall.
Unlike other parents, my mum was impermeable to manipulation, sweet-watery-I´m-a-poor-baby eyes, and weak arguments. You could throw yourself under a train, in a desperate attempt to earn her sympathy, and she´d still remain unmoved, eating pumpkin seeds.
- I´ll teach you but you´ll have to do it yourself. You have a brain, two arms and hands; legs; the whole equipment. - She closed the argument, using the same premise she used for every other request.
Do.It.Yourself.
I´ll.Teach.You.How.To.Do.It. (instead of doing it for you).
We hated her, then. Me and my sister would temporarily retreat into our bedroom to plan the demise of our mother:
How could she?
Why wasn´t she like all other mothers?
Why did she have to make us work so hard for everything? 
Eventually, after the murder plotting was complete, we´d head back to the kitchen with our tails between our legs, "Happy Potter" reading glasses hanging from our defeated noses, a notebook and a pen, and sharpened senses.
- Ready to learn? - She´d ask, satisfied. - And write it all down because, next time, you´ll do it alone.
My mum believed we could learn everything - anything - if we put our mind and effort to it. And she knew of the value of WRAPPING UP OUR SLEEVES AND CREATING WHAT WE WANT TO MANIFEST.
Doing it - whatever "it" may be - for us would make us weak; teaching us how to do it would make us strong.
The ones who listen to a class, forget what they´ve listened.
The ones who copy a teacher, become copy-machines.
The ones who do the deed, learn.
It´s easier to have a cake served on your table - no idea how it was made, how it got there;
It´s easier to follow formulas, rules, a guru that tells you where to go and how to go about it;
It would had been easier to have a mum who pampered me and my sister, baking us the damned cakes instead of teaching us to bake them.
Life isn´t easy, though.
Don´t get me wrong: life is fabulous, exhilarating; miraculous. But it isn´t easy.
We have to be ready to bake the cake with our own hands - messing up, failing and trying again, learning the only way we learn: doing it with our own hands - instead of waiting for someone to do it in our place.
My mum is no Tony Robbins.
In fact, I´m sure Tony would find a dysfunctional thing or two in the way she raised us. But, make no mistake, there are treasures in the midst of the rumble. The key is to spot them and apply them; save them like a lucky charm we keep, forever, in our pocket.
This was one of my Mum´s Self-Empowerment Rules: learn how to do it yourself; if you have a brain and a functioning body, there´s no real limitation stopping you from making it happen.
Later in life, when I started to develop my dance teaching method, the inheritance she´d left in me came to the surface.
Although I´m all for education and I can be a real pain in the neck in regards with the details of Egyptian Dance Technique, I always throw my students back to themselves, into the frightening pool of the "doing", testing their knowledge, creativity, limits and infinite potential.
I teach you how to swim so I can throw you into the swimming pool when you least expect it.
And although the education I´ve delivered is precious, it´s only when you´re out there, in the pool, fighting for your life, applying what you´ve learned from pulling rocks from your guts, that you learn how to swim. Truly.
What about YOUR MUM?
Did she pass on to you a SELF-EMPOWERMENT TOOL worthy of sharing?
Let me know all about it via email (write at [email protected])
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