First off, wow. I think the woman in this prompt by Joni Green deserves a crown. Raising eight children isn’t easy. Boys and girls have their own challenges, so I think raising eight children well is something you deserve to be honored for. I am one of four and this woman had twice as many as my parents.
On top of that she’s a single mom. Raising even one child by yourself is hard. Even a single parent with a support system is still, at the end of the day, a single parent. There are some things that no one other than the child’s other parent can do and the woman in this prompt manage to go a good job of raising her eight boys.
Given that this conversation takes place in her “small shack” we know she is almost definitely poor. It is likely that she had no finacial help from someone with a significant amount of money to spend on her boys. These boys certainly didn’t have their own rooms. It is unlikely given the description that their home had more than two bedrooms if it had that many. They almost certainly shared a single bathroom.
Someone is challenging her. Who is it and why? Is one of her boys talking back? Maybe some who thinks this character is beneath her is trying to push her down a level. I absolutely think someone said something along the lines of, “Who died and made you queen?” and she will not take it.
This woman absolutely knows her worth. And what is more, she knows the worth of her boys and that they grew up well. She will not let anyone belittle that accomplishment or her boys. And it doesn’t matter who is trying to do that.
I am using her metric that no one is in jail as a definition of her boys growing up well. We don’t actually know much about them, only that they are all her sons and they are all not currently in jail. Presumably they haven’t been in jail in the past, but who knows. This woman did right by her boys and she deserves the praise for it.
Do you have any characters who grew up in a situation similar to that of her boys or perhaps you have a character who is like the mother. What is their story? What have they triumphed over to get to this point?
