Revista cultural digital
From Mom to Mom:
Motherhood in Migration
A CONVERSATION WITH AFLOAT
Written by Evelyn Amarillas
​
I never imagined myself being a mother away from my family in Mexico. Mexican families are very attached, close, sociable. We always say that family comes first. But above all, the figure of the mother is fundamental in our culture, as she is traditionally conceived as the cornerstone of the family, and that is something that, for better or worse, is the case in many countries.
Since mothers bear almost all the burden of raising children and caring for the family, in Mexico as well as in the rest of Latin America, women accompany each other to lighten that burden. Whether they are neighbors, aunts, cousins or school friends, there is a kind of solidarity among women —or sorority— that becomes a support network for both mothers and their children. I myself remember my childhood that way, and today I see the women in my family, beyond the blood ties that unite us, as friends and accomplices. And that's how I thought it would be one day for my children too.... But it happened that life surprised me on the other side of the world and I discovered in Germany —and decided— that I would become a mother for the first time. From the very first moment, the happiness and the illusion of my pregnancy were mixed with the doubts and fears of any first-time mom, but also with the nostalgia and sadness of the migratory grief that never goes away completely. Despite having a great partner by my side and a circle of close friends here in this country, motherhood is a very complex process that only those who have lived it can understand, and for that reason I needed to connect with someone who had gone through the same thing, some sort of guide that could tell me that everything was going to be alright.
I was determined to settle down in this other country, and it became necessary, urgent for me to look for a support network of mothers, and that's how I came to Afloat, a non-profit association dedicated to providing support to international mothers in Germany, and which, fortunately for me, had a special group made up exclusively of Spanish-speaking moms. In the support group "De mamá a mamá" I met women from different Latin American countries who live motherhood in Germany and know the challenges of raising a family in a culture and language foreign to ours. When I met them, some of them already had children, others were pregnant, and even though we all have very different stories, a very special connection was created between us. We all seemed to be looking for that sense of community that we know from our countries. These women were the ones I turned to with my doubts and questions during my pregnancy, from simple things like what kind of changing table I needed to get, which hospital in the area was the best, or how to understand the bureaucratic procedures related to family in Germany; very specific things that only they, sharing motherhood, migratory experiences and a similar culture, could understand and help me with.
While the support and love of my family in Mexico has always been present and is my main basis for everything, it has also been a relief to have this other family here, to connect with other migration stories, to feel accompanied and guided. That is why in this month that I celebrate my first Mother's Day as a mom and that marks exactly one year since I joined Afloat, together with my colleagues from Micelio I met with the women who coordinate this support network to talk and reflect about motherhood in migration and the great work they have in their hands as part of this association.
Keeping Us Afloat
Afloat began in 2020 as a social initiative by Argentinian-Canadian Andrea Waisgluss, who as a volunteer for Postpartum Support International decided to create support groups for moms in Heidelberg, Germany, in both English and Spanish, focusing on maternal mental health. At that time, Johanna Tonn-Straavaldsen, the current director of Afloat, was working as a doula with international families, accompanying women during their pregnancies and in the postpartum period; upon learning about Afloat's work, she realized that it was a perfect fit for the families she was working with and decided to get involved. From her experience accompanying international families living in Germany, and being herself also an international mother coming from the United States, Johanna discovered that loneliness was one of the biggest difficulties for these mothers, and that they needed a support network:
​
"They come to a new place and start over, maybe without a network of any kind, language and cultural barriers. Add to that that really especially in the time in which you're pregnant or have young kids is where you need a network even more. That's a huge challenge and it has real consequences. It's not just a hard thing. For some people it makes a difference between having postpartum experience as positive and having a postpartum experience where there's so many challenges that take a big toll."
From the beginning, Afloat's goal has always been to provide mothers with the support and resources they need to get through parenthood, which Johanna considers an "intense phase of life". While during its first months of creation Afloat kept its meeting format virtual due to the pandemic, this allowed the initiative to grow and the groups to expand throughout Germany:
​
"The idea was that we bring people together and provide that which was missing, and after corona when we opened it up to all of Germany, we realized there's a huge demand. There are people who are dealing with postpartum depression or anxiety, or another mood or anxiety disorder who feel really isolated. Sometimes they feel alone in their feelings and also alone in their shame about how they're feeling. And reducing that by connecting to other people is really powerful, but even people who aren't struggling with their mental health: almost everyone in parenthood needs support."
​
After having laid the foundations of what Afloat is today, Andrea left her role as director and since then Johanna has been in charge of continuing the work of supporting international mothers. In addition to the doula experience, Johanna personally admits that although her children were not born in Germany, she herself had a difficult postpartum experience and overcoming that stage left her with important lessons that she can now share to help others:
​
"Sometimes things didn't work out the way I thought they would, and I really struggled emotionally. I got through that and getting past that point and developing a love for the process of parenting was really powerful. When I started with Afloat my kids were older and I wasn't in that intense phase, but for the last three years, it's just giving me an opportunity to look back, take some of my experience and feel like I can give to other parents."
For her, going back to that difficult time and talking about what she experienced is also a way of healing, and from her experience, being part of Afloat has had a positive impact on her life.
Currently, Afloat offers support to mothers or caregivers through groups that cover different needs: in addition to the Spanish group, there is a group in English, a group for pregnant women, a group for Black mothers and a group for mothers with older children. Also, a group for international fathers or fathers in international families in Germany was created recently. The work of coordinating each group is voluntary, and comes from people who also live these experiences, so the conversation takes place horizontally, without hierarchies. And the best part is that anyone can join, there is no access fee or prerequisite, although donations are always welcome. For Johanna, this is one of the things that make Afloat coherent in both form and content, as she herself recognizes that economic difficulties can be an obstacle when it comes to accessing support as migrant moms:
​
"We know that there's lots of different things that put people at risk for experiencing a challenge or a mental health issue and being an international person is one of those but also struggling economically it's another risk factor, so we wouldn't want to add a layer on top of that and make it less accessible."
​
Since 2021 Afloat has been registered as a Verein, a non-profit association, which allows it to stay true to its goal, offering support to anyone in need while covering operating costs. For Johanna, this has been a challenge and has taken a lot of time and work, but it has been the best option for the project, because being an association also means that there is no one person who is above it all, but rather a community. And that is exactly what Afloat seeks to be: that community to hold on to when you feel like you are drowning, because, in Johanna's words:
​
"When you're in parenthood or just generally, but especially new parenthood, you feel like you can be drowning all the time, drowning in all the things you have to learn, drowning in the feelings and the experiences, and you need something to kind of feel like your head is above the water."
​
From Mom to Mom
In addition to the things that unite us with other women as international mothers in Germany, and the fact that, as Johanna told us, being an international person in Germany is a very strong and almost instant connecting factor, language plays a key role in the process of feeling part of a community. Our mother tongue not only serves us to communicate, but it is the vehicle through which we transmit our culture, and when we are far away from our country of origin, it becomes a refuge, a fundamental part of what we consider home. That is why the "De mamá a mamá" support group aims to meet this need among mothers from Spanish-speaking countries, not only because we share similar cultures, but also because we have very similar concepts of motherhood that sometimes contrast with the way in which parenting and the role of the mother is conceived in Germany, and it is also important to express these cultural clashes.
Lilian López has facilitated the group in Spanish since 2021 and was my first contact with the association a year ago. Mexican like me, she arrived in Germany in 2013 and after having her first child in this country she experienced a very difficult stage that led her to seek help, and on that path she discovered Afloat. The support she found in the first group she was part of led her to also get involved as a facilitator of the group in Spanish:
"In the whole process that I went through with my first child, in which I had postpartum depression and experienced again that search for identity and finding myself as a mother and as a person, I realized that something that gives me a lot of satisfaction is helping others. So, having the opportunity to do it through Afloat, with such a beautiful cause that is so close to my heart and with which I identify a lot, has been something that has impacted my life very positively".
Now that she is expecting her second child, Lilian decided to invite Anahí Franco, who was also part of the first Afloat group, to coordinate the group. This has allowed her to have more flexibility due to the unpredictability of pregnancy, while still being part of the beautiful community that has been created among the moms.
For her part, Anahí expressed her happiness to join the organization in her new role as a facilitator, in which she feels more prepared after working in another organization supporting the integration of migrants in Germany. In addition, the stage she is in today as a mother is different, and that seems to her also to be an advantage when it comes to helping other mothers:
​
"My experience is now much greater. I understand very well the process of migration, the concept of Ulysses syndrome, what happens when you migrate, the uprooting, how hard it is to create a new life project far from what you had built in your country of origin, to start from scratch and build a new support network... And suddenly being with these women, many of whom have very young babies and most of them are not in the process I am in now, makes me see motherhood in a different way. I see it now as a process and I see and know the complexity and the need to support a mother in that process of loneliness."
​
Anahí is also Mexican and arrived five years ago in Germany with her son and husband. All the changes she experienced upon her arrival, the death of her father at the end of 2019 and the first lockdown due to the pandemic at the beginning of 2020, led her to go through, in her words, "a very emotionally complex process". For her, the cultural differences in Germany were especially challenging, because in Latin America people "are super sociable, we are very much about working together, about making community" and, in addition to that, not speaking German was a big barrier, and showed her the importance of creating a Spanish-speaking community:
"Emotions also have a language. You can't communicate how you feel as assertively as you can in your mother tongue, so being able to do it with women I didn't know, but who shared identity and cultural traits, getting to know them and their situation and being able to create a support network made me understand how important it is to feel supported, accompanied and part of a group".
​
Both Lilian and Anahí recognize that since they joined Afloat at the beginning of the project until today as facilitators, many things in their lives have changed, and they see in their volunteer work a way to give back what they once received from the association. However, they also know that helping others who may be experiencing a difficult time is a complicated task, so they both put their own mental health as a priority, and consider individual psychological therapy to be very important to, in Lilian's words, "try to maintain that mental balance". Setting boundaries is another key point for both of them, for example, knowing to what extent they can support the moms in the groups and recognizing when it is necessary to access other types of support and providing the resources to find them. This allows them, according to Lilian, to continue learning and enjoying what they do:
"I am a very sensitive person, so it often affects me to see the suffering of others, but I think it also helps me to feel that I am doing something in some way, whether it is the support of listening or finding a resource that can help them (...) offering that help gives me the peace of mind that I am doing my part".
​
Anahí, on the other hand, considers that establishing her priorities and being aware of the time and energy she has available for her projects is vital to take care of herself: "It helps me a lot to be organized and to be very aware of what I can give, how much I can give and not force myself to give more than I can't."
As for the experience of raising her child in a country other than her own and transmitting her culture to her children, Lilian told us that, despite the challenges, it has been an enriching experience for her to be in another country, and open her perspectives on life: "Taking the best of each culture, that's what I hope to instill in my son. To tell him ‘This is the best of our culture, but that is also the positive things of Germany' and to try to incorporate that in his life".
In the same way, for Anahí, transmitting her language and culture to her son is a non-negotiable issue: "He knows that in Mexico he has a very big family and, who knows, maybe in the future he will surprise me and think it would be better to return to his other country, and I give him all the tools so that, if at some point he wants to do it, he can do it". Creating bonds with the culture of origin, despite the distance and through other people who experience motherhood in migration, is also an advantage for their children, so that they can listen to other people speaking the language of their maternal family and also feel part of that other culture.
​
After listening to Johanna, Lilian and Anahí, I realized that having my Afloat community has definitely made a difference in my experience as a migrant mother, and that I have a lot to thank them for. Having women like them in my life inspires and motivates me when sometimes the difficulties of life far from my country make the distances harder to bear. I know I have many challenges ahead as a mom. My journey is just beginning and the road can get difficult at times, but fortunately I am not going alone. I am accompanied by Natalia, Lucía, Susana, Lilian, Candy, Anahí, Diana, Paula and Alessandra, and I am enjoying the ride.