enSoie

We meet Sibille in Zurich. Sibille is wearing our limited Flowers of Love Blia stole and is holding a Sourire vase filled with flowers or Mother's Day. 

enSoie: How do you manage the balance between caring for others and caring for yourself?
Sibille: I do not always manage it, and that is perfectly fine. Being a mother involves sacrifice, and in sacrificing, as the word suggests, you give something up. Sometimes that something is, for a moment, caring for yourself. What matters is knowing when it is time to turn my attention back to myself, so that I can give again afterwards. We are often presented with a false ideal. Perfect balance simply does not exist.

In what ways do you express affection that might not be immediately visible?
In general, people feel my affection straight away, no second glance required. As a mother, however, much of the care I give is something my daughter may only come to understand later in life. Not because she does not feel my love, but because she cannot yet make sense of certain things. How much parents truly give is often something we only recognise with time.

If you are a grandmother, or imagine becoming one, how do you think that role differs from being a parent?
I believe that as a grandmother you are allowed almost anything, whereas with your own child you are often cast as the “bad one”, because raising a child is one of the essential responsibilities of parenthood. Bringing up children should not fall to grandparents; that responsibility lies with the parents. With me, it should feel, every single time, like the summer holidays.

What is something about motherhood or caregiving that we rarely talk about?
That it is perfectly fine not to always enjoy being a mother. That you are allowed to say, I love my child, but I do not always love being a mother. And that it is truly exhausting. In the early years, you cannot even go to the bathroom in peace.

Sibille Albertin captured by Linda Gabriel.