For us cross-cultural workers, so far away from our mothers, we tend to mother ourselves — to hack and schedule and self-care our way into health and flourishing. And we can get pretty good at it. We are creative, resilient people, and we couldn’t keep going if we didn’t have some measure of endurance and spirit.
We’ve learned to live without our mothers, and many of us are perhaps living without mother-figures, as well. We feel the weight of cross-cultural life and ministry, without anyone to make us a cup of soup on a sick day or pop over to read to the kids so we can have some breathing room. Learning to do without, we can feel strong and capable — even as we long for things to be different, to have the both the gifts of living overseas and the gifts of being physically near to our loved ones. To have someone take care of us, for a change.
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