Life Lessons for Moms from the Movie <span style="font-style:italic;">In My Life</span>

Blame it on typhoon Ondoy why I cried buckets of tears yesterday. It’s been raining nonstop since Friday night, and there’s nothing we could do but stay inside the house to keep us warm. But I have to go out to do our weekly grocery shopping. I know my husband was getting restless, too, just staying at home, so I urged him to go with me, so we could also watch a movie.

We took advantage of this chance to go out together since Justin’s lolo and lola (my parents) were there to take care of him while we’re gone. And so off to the cinema we went. We had different movies in mind, however, so we decided to go our separate ways and meet up afterwards to go to the supermarket. He went to see Surrogates, and I went to see Ate Vi’s movie In My Life.

I was glad I watched this flick. What I want most in this movie aside from Ate Vi’s and John Lloyd’s superb acting (Luis’ portrayal of a homosexual was fine, too) is that I went home with wonderful lessons about motherhood, such as:

1. What we tell our children can make or break them. When we tell them they aren’t capable of one thing for one reason or another, they think that’s the truth and they may later end up not believing in themselves, so we should be careful with our words.

2. We should allow our children to live their own lives. We can only nurture them and guide them, but we can’t mold them into the kind of persons we would like them to be. They are thinking individuals, and they know what they want for themselves.

In My Life is a story of a single mom, Shirley (Ate Vi), who works as a school librarian. When she learns of her daughter Dang’s plans to leave her to go to Australia, she opts to stay with her gay son, Mark (Luis Manzano), in New York. Mark’s lover, Noel (John Lloyd), helps her start a new life in the Big Apple as she also tries to recapture her lost relationship with Mark. She feels shortchanged when she learns that Mark and Noel are keeping a dark secret from her.