My mother.
From a family of seven children, born on a farm to a mother who didn’t want any (a grandmother who herself had been married at sixteen, at a time when women didn’t have contraceptives, but that’s another story).
My grandmother wanted to commit suicide when she gave birth to my mother.
A family that was forced to march in step; little affection, the violence of my grandfather, the frivolity of my grandmother, who preferred to forage and flee the farm than to be a present and attentive mother.
A family context where kindness was only a vague concept that would be talked about decades later…
My mother leaves the family home as soon as possible after meeting my father.
A marriage, three children and eighteen years of life together, punctuated by the successive transfers of my father whom our tribe followed everywhere in France, my mother being unable to work very logically.
And then they get divorced.
My mother finds herself with the three of us, without any real qualifications.
At forty, she enrolled at the IUFM and obtained her teaching diploma. A few years later, she was a school principal.
Since then, retired, she is the most athletic woman I know.
Registered in various associations, she does two hours of sport per day and is in great shape. It is impossible to tell me that she has just celebrated her seventieth birthday, she is so full of vitality.
Of course, it’s not perfect either.
But who is?
His life journey is totally inspiring.
A fighter.
A resilient woman with great strength and bravery.
She reminds me of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) in Hunger Games.
A real heroine.