Youth Be Heard
2020 art contest finalist, portrait of grandmother
2020 Art Contest Finalist,  Art,  Family

I Miss Her

November 16, 2020 / No Comments

By Helen Ngo, 16

Medium: paper and colored pencil

This is a portrait of my beautiful grandmother–a reference I took myself when I visited her long ago. I wanted to capture the love and excitement in her eyes when she knew I wanted to draw her. “I’m too ugly,” she scolded me, but I drew her anyway and her beauty will last forever. I struggle with a language barrier with my grandmother; art is how I wanted to show my love and appreciation without words.

Instagram: @helengo.x

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The biggest thing in life that I have overcome is learning how to accept people for who they are. When I say this, I mean I'm learning how to deal with others and not be mad at them for not giving me what I really need. All my life I believed my mother favored my brother over me. I would see how she showed us different emotions. It felt as if I could do the greatest things and it wouldn’t be good enough. No matter what my brother did he would always have my mother’s support. As I got older, I realized that a lot of moms seem to spoil their sons more than their daughters. I began to see that this as a pattern and a lot of girls feel the same way! Many girls have felt that they are their mother’s disappointment. For girls that have no father around, it’s harder for them to accept how their mother is raising them. I had a hard time accepting how my mother was raising me thinking that she didn’t love me. Most girls feel like their parents show favoritism and that it is very unfair. Moms try to keep their daughters in the house while they let their sons have more freedom out. My mother always makes me come home earlier than my brother. A lot of girls feel that their parents know how miserable it is to be in the house all day and that their mom will do anything to make their brother happy by letting him do any activity. I felt like my mom didn’t want me to enjoy being a kid like my brother did. But when I see it from my mom’s perspective, I know some of it has to do with protection. I felt that she was showing favoritism but only because of her fear of something happening to me. My brother and I have different dangers. Mothers fear their sons could die because of gun violence. As of today, gun violence has been taking so many lives away from young men. In my town it’s been dangerous and scary so I know moms spoil their sons a lot due to that. And for girls, there is the danger of sex trafficking. At one point it was so heavy-many girls had stories about people following them. My mom has been really protective and acted like she doesn’t want me to do anything since so many deaths have happened in my city. I also learned that women treat their daughters a certain kind of way because they want them to be better than when they were younger. Some moms got pregnant at an early age and don’t want their daughters to make the same mistakes. I realized my mom just wants to protect me. And that sometimes our parents have saved us from a world of dangerous things and big mistakes. But, our mother’s don’t realize we need more than tough love. That we need emotional support and more love shown to us. We often don’t get that from our mothers. There are many reasons why moms love their children in different kinds of ways. But it’s hurtful to us that we think negatively when it comes to love from our mothers. I feel that later in life it could affect us if we feel like we didn’t have much love growing up. We may think of how our moms love our brothers more. I feel that this is a pattern that’s been around for generations. I think that moms think this is normal so this why it is a pattern but it is hurting us in so many ways. In society, woman try to make their daughters strong and they raise them to be independent. The intentions are not harmful but in a way, it hurts us. So in order for us to break this cycle, we must show more emotional support to all children equally. I also feel like all girls that have this feeling should really talk to their mom. I understand that sometimes as teenagers we think our moms might not get how we feel. Sometimes we think she won’t listen and still act the same. I think as young girls we should speak up more on how we feel when someone is treating us a way that we don’t like. As teenagers, we hold so much in instead of talking out the problems that have happened. Mothers only teach what they were taught. But that doesn’t mean we should be silent. We should talk to them about it. And you are not alone if you have tough love from your mom. It’s probably not because they love you any less. It’s simply because that’s what they’ve been taught and what they know. It helped me to learn this. I know my mom still loves me the same as my brother, but she shows it in different ways.

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