If you ask Christine Banfield to name the one thing she is most proud of her in life, her answer would be motherhood and raising her 21-year-old daughter, Ashtine.
For Christine, raising Ashtine was a test in perseverance, hard life lessons learnt, and in many ways a test of her own personal fortitude. Recalling the moments she told her parents at age 18 she was pregnant and hearing their disappointment and rebuke, Christine knew her journey into motherhood wasn’t going to be an easy one.
“My parents weren’t pleased, they never wanted that road for me,” she revealed. “They wanted me to go and continue my studies so they were extremely disappointed when I told them the news. Truthfully, I could understand how they felt because it’s not what you would expect or want for your daughter.”
Knowing that she hadn’t lived up to her parent’s expectations, fallen short of her own, and subsequent upheaval with the father of her baby, made pregnancy difficult, and life afterwards when her daughter was born.
“I felt overwhelmed and felt that I had sidelined my life and I was extremely depressed. I had post-partum depression and couldn’t really deal with my baby,” Christine said.
“During that time it was my grandmother who was there to support me. I was really closest to her back then and she stepped in and helped take care of Ashtine because I couldn’t.”
According to Christine, because of the post-partum depression and her feelings of isolation, even hearing her daughter cry became unbearable.
“My grandmother used to keep her a lot of the time during that first year,” Christine said. “I would try to bond with her but she used to cry a lot and the crying made me feel even worse. She would only cry with me and when she’s with my grandmother she was the happiest child.”
With the depression lasting months, Christine turned to PAREDOS for help.
“I saw a counsellor there and she helped me to realize what was going on with post-partum depression. She helped me to realize that lots of women go through it and that I could work through it,” Christine said. “Through that I started to go for Ashtine more often and keeping her with me. By the time she was two years old, I had her full-time.”
At that time giving her daughter a proper life was all that Christine focused her attention on. Having since abandoned any thoughts of returning to school, she poured her heart and soul into Ashtine.
One thing that Christine did nurture was a close relationship with her daughter. After not having that with her own mother, she wanted the type of relationship she’d always dreamed of.
“My mother wasn’t a bad mother but we never had a close relationship,” Christine said. “I was closer to my grandmother and I always felt connected to her. My grandmother always told me that Ashtine should be my source of inspiration going forward.”
Christine took her grandmother’s advice to heart and the pair became inseparable, sharing confidences and fostering a strong mother-daughter bond.
“I changed a great deal,” Christine said of motherhood. “I never had patience before and I learnt how to listen. I opened up my communication skills. I always told her that I’m going to make mistakes because I’m human, but I always encouraged her to talk to me. The things that my mother did with me I did the opposite with Ashtine.”
But there was one similarity Christine shared with her mother. That was having your daughter sit you down and tell you, at age 18, that she’s pregnant.
“I was so upset when she told me. When she told me I told her ‘I couldn’t talk to you right now, I need a time out’. Right there I could understand what my parents went through, I was so angry,” Christine revealed. “By the evening my head was cooler and calmer and I told her whatever decision she made I would back her.”
Perhaps that was a situation where life repeats itself, or life coming full circle for Christine. But despite that, her daughter is now a mother to three-year-old Xakodia Springer.
While her mum feared she wouldn’t continue her studies, Ashtine plans to continue her studies in accounting. She has even encouraged her own mother to pursue the studies she abandoned years earlier to raise her.
“Ashtine was the one that encourage me to go back to school,” Christine said. “When she would come home from school she would tell me the things she learnt and she would help me with my grammar.
“While she might have thought I was helping her with her homework, she was helping me a lot more. I returned to school in my 30s and Ashtine was my encouragement. She has always pushed me to rise higher.”
