Editorial: Being A Mother By Manuela Franjou

Being a mother is something magical. You start being one with your baby, it is part of your body, then you have a baby that is totally dependent on you, which you love that human being more than anything you have ever known and you then raise them to be independent and fly as far as they want to go.

I am now pregnant with my 4th child and my eldest daughter is 13 years old next month and has become my best friend, my partner, she knows what she wants and where to take her life. I listen to her and accompany her, we are very close to each other but not dependent, although I am still her guide.

I am about to relive all the stages from the newborn to the beginning of adolescence and I wanted to portray it, like an ode to being a mother. I wanted to include my little girl, because one day they maybe want to carry a baby in their bodies, maybe they don’t, maybe my boy who has 9 is the one who wants to have kids more than her, but anyway, I think in our culture we didn’t speak enough, we didn’t say enough about how we feel being a mother, a father and all the feelings and I want my daughters to know exactly how I am feeling.

No one tells us what it is like being a mother, the love, attachment, each stage of childhood, from birth to adolescence, every change seems very hard, that we lose them, we lose our little child, we lose a part of us, but often what they become is even more magical as they become their selfs, with all the power and lessons we teach them, what we have given them. Photography is my way to tell her how important it is for me to be her mother, how much I love them, how beautiful it is in each and every stage.

Here is the new addition to our family Cyan with his three siblings.