Honor the Weight, Honor the Work

Honor the Weight, Honor the Work

By Yvonne Monique Livingston, LLC Co-founder of SISTAMoms | Founder and Director of Talk To Me And See Inc, 501(c)(3) I represent a new way of Being in service to Love. God guides and I follow.

On this Mother’s Day, May 11th, 2025, I do not arrive with pleasantries. I arrive with presence. With the full truth of what it means to mother not just through biology, but through bond, burden, and becoming.

Motherhood, for me, did not begin in a hospital room or with a baby shower. It began in 1979, when my baby sister, Jasmine L. Livingston, was born. I was six years old. That was the moment I became a mother in the physical realm. No one told me what it would require. But I knew, somehow, that I had to show up. And I did. That beginning shaped every act of care, sacrifice, and nurture that would follow.

There is a deep, historical irony in this country celebrating mothers while profiting from the legacy of separating them from their children. That contradiction is not lost on me. It lives in my bones, and in the bones of those who came before me.

I have birthed six children. I knew each of them in the womb. Their names were not chosen, they were revealed.

Clarence A. Armour, named after Clarence William Armour

.Amanda A. Armour, named after Love itself.

Bryan A. Armour, named after a conversation with Rosalind Jackson.

David A. Livingston, named after King David in the Bible.

Ethan A. Armour, named after Ethan the Ezrahite, a musician and wise man in scripture.

Faith A. Epting, named after the rejections I walked through, because it was Faith that held me upright.

So far, Amanda and David have asked for the stories of their naming, and I have shared. The others will come to me in time, and I will tell them too. I owe them that truth.

I did not always parent with gentleness. That came later. It came when my body no longer allowed for the old ways. Disability shifted my parenting. And grace took root in that space. I once invited others to help guide my children. Some brought healing. Others brought harm. And I carry all of that with me.

I returned to school in the midst of it all, not for the world’s validation, but to finish something inside myself. To honor the parts of me that needed tending, not just tasking. Education became part of my liberation.

I have never forgotten the promise of forty acres and a mule. I am not waiting for justice in a neat package. I am doing what my ancestors did, working, building, planting, speaking, surviving. I carry their unfinished prayers in my chest. My life is a continuation of theirs.

And now, I have touched the soil of Ghana. I have begun to trace my DNA, reaching through time to see the hands that held me before I was born. That journey confirmed what I always felt: there is nothing new under the sun. My struggle, my love, my calling, none of it is random. It is rooted.

Some people came for the photos, not the labor. But I labored. With scripture. With scarcity. With strength. With sorrow. I labored with love.

I am the daughter of Dianah Livingston and Floyd Manning. I am the mother of six. I am the first mother to my baby sister. I am the fruit and the soil. I am still standing.

This is how I love. This is how I build. This is how I carry us forward.