{"id":3068,"date":"2026-11-04T14:39:07","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T09:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chireveti.com\/?p=3068"},"modified":"2026-11-04T14:39:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T09:09:09","slug":"the-mothers-radar-has-no-off-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chireveti.com\/pl\/the-mothers-radar-has-no-off-switch","title":{"rendered":"Radar matki nie ma przycisku wy\u0142\u0105czaj\u0105cego"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Mother's Radar Has No Off Switch | A Reflection on Motherhood<\/h3>
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On motherhood, intuition and the things we feel but cannot always explain.<\/em><\/p>

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I sometimes wonder whether all mothers have this strange little radar, or whether some of us are simply wired to feel things more intensely than others. I don’t know. I can only speak about what I have experienced myself. Perhaps I am one of those people who notices too much, feels too much and occasionally makes life a little more complicated than it needs to be. My few grey hairs might suggest that I have earned the right to know myself by now. Nothing wrong with that, really. Perhaps other mothers experience exactly the same thing and simply don’t talk about it. Or perhaps they do, but we have never compared notes.<\/p>

There is something about being a mother that I find difficult to explain. It isn’t always about hearing something in your child’s voice or noticing a change in behaviour. Sometimes there is no conversation, no message, no obvious indication that anything is wrong. You are simply going about your day when something inside you shifts. A sudden heat shoots through your body, your chest tightens, and there is a strange trembling that seems to sit somewhere inside you. You cannot quite explain it, but you cannot ignore it either. Your mind starts revisiting conversations, remembering little details and trying to connect things that might not even be connected. You make coffee, answer messages, read something, get on with your day, but a part of your attention is somewhere else. Night is not much better. The body is tired, but the mind has other plans. You turn from one side to another, close your eyes, open them again, say a little prayer and promise yourself that tomorrow you will be more sensible. Morning comes, and the thoughts are still there. They follow you through the day, sometimes quietly, sometimes making themselves rather difficult to ignore.<\/p>

Recently, my own radar seems to have received a rather enthusiastic upgrade. It is working overtime, and the universe, apparently dissatisfied with the existing arrangements, has decided to spice things up with additional reels and other media. Just when I think I have enough on my mind, another little message appears on my screen. I don’t know whether to call it coincidence, strange timing or the universe having a particularly active social-media department. Whatever it is, I seem to have received the full subscription.<\/p>

It was actually this Instagram reel about a mother’s radar<\/a> that made me stop scrolling. It touched on something I have felt but never quite managed to describe. You can speak to your child, hear that everything is fine, and still feel that something doesn’t quite match. You listen to the words, but something in you is paying attention to what is not being said. And sometimes this happens when your child is nowhere near you. That is the part I find particularly difficult to explain to people who have never experienced it. I know there are explanations involving emotional attachment, sensitivity, familiarity and the way our brains learn the smallest details about people we love. Researchers study the connection between mothers and children, their emotional responses and even physiological synchrony. I find that interesting. But I sometimes feel that the experience itself is much messier than the language used to describe it. We can study something, give it a name and measure certain reactions, yet still struggle to explain what it feels like to live through it. I am not suggesting that every uneasy feeling is a message from somewhere or that mothers possess some supernatural ability. Fear can mislead us, too. But I don’t think everything we cannot explain should be dismissed simply because it doesn’t fit neatly into a scientific description.<\/p>

I have written before about how motherhood changes when children grow up in Czy zawiod\u0142am jako matka? Patrz\u0105c teraz wstecz<\/a>. Our place in their lives changes, sometimes quite dramatically, but the protective instinct doesn’t seem to receive the announcement. When they are little, we hold their hands, check the road, put plasters on scraped knees and make sure they don’t eat something questionable from the floor. We know where the dangers might be, or at least we think we do. Then they grow up. Suddenly, the dangers have different names. Decisions, friendships, relationships, ambitions, disappointments and mistakes. We cannot follow them into every situation, and we certainly cannot make every decision on their behalf.<\/p>

I sometimes think a mother would willingly stand in front of the entire world if that meant her child could avoid one unnecessary hurt. It doesn’t matter whether that child is five or thirty-five. The instinct doesn’t seem particularly interested in age. We stop holding their hands, but something inside us never quite stops reaching for them.<\/p>

I was reminded of this again by the recent heartbreaking story from Haryana about a little girl bitten by an eight-year-old child. I cannot begin to imagine what went through the minds of the two mothers. The fear and pain of the mother whose little girl was hurt, and the shock and distress of the mother whose young child was involved. Two mothers, two very different experiences, and emotions neither could have imagined carrying. I don’t want to turn somebody else’s tragedy into a convenient lesson about life. Some things are simply heartbreaking. What I cannot stop thinking about is how much a mother’s heart can be asked to hold, sometimes on both sides of a situation. And this is where the whole business of motherhood becomes rather complicated. We want to protect our children, but we also know that they have to live their own lives. They must make decisions, sometimes get things wrong, experience disappointment and discover that the world isn’t always fair. We can advise, listen, offer a shoulder and occasionally repeat the same thing for the forty-seventh time, with very little evidence that it has been absorbed. Then we have to step back.<\/p>

I sometimes wish this radar came with a little more practical power. Not just the ability to send strange signals through my body, but the ability to do something useful with them. If only it could reach across the distance, warn our children, heal what hurts, remove unnecessary obstacles and turn them away from things that could so easily have been avoided. Imagine being able to use that feeling to make things right before they go wrong. I would certainly find that feature useful. But then comes the uncomfortable question: how much of life would they learn if we could protect them from everything? Would they discover their own strength if we kept clearing every obstacle? Some experiences, even the unpleasant ones, open doors we would never have noticed otherwise. A disappointment can change direction, an unexpected ending can become an opportunity, and something we initially see as an injustice may eventually lead somewhere we could not have planned. I don’t say this to make difficult things sound beautiful. Some things are unfair, full stop. But I don’t want to believe that every difficult moment is the end of something good. So, when my radar starts sending its signals, I try to find my way back to faith. I talk to God, sometimes quite a lot. I ask for enough faith to trust that whatever is unfolding may eventually lead somewhere better. That this time, whatever is happening, there might be something good waiting beyond what I can currently see. I ask for the strength not to let fear take over, and for the ability to recognise an opportunity when it finally appears. It is easy to trust the universe when everything goes according to plan. It is considerably harder when something feels unfair and you cannot understand why things have taken such a turn.<\/p>

I still want to believe that life can surprise us in better ways, that new doors can open and that our children will find their own way through situations we cannot solve for them. Faith, for me, is not pretending that everything is wonderful. It is trying to trust even when I don’t have the answers.<\/p>

I once read a line in a Polish book, many years ago. I cannot remember the title or the author. In fact, I remember nothing else about the book, only this sentence, which has somehow stayed with me:<\/p>

\u017bycie jest kurewskim dowcipem, a my jeste\u015bmy jego pierdolon\u0105 point\u0105.<\/em><\/p>

Life is one hell of a joke, and we are its fucking punchline.<\/p>

A rather strong sentence, I know. But there is something about Polish humour that can put frustration, absurdity and a little truth into one brutally honest line. And sometimes, when life is behaving particularly badly, I find myself remembering it. I suppose this is the strange arrangement of motherhood. We spend years teaching our children to walk on their own, and then spend the rest of our lives trying to resist the urge to run after them. We know they need their freedom, their mistakes, their discoveries and their own stories. We also know that we will never stop caring about what happens in those stories.<\/p>

I don’t know whether every mother has this radar, whether some of us feel it more intensely or whether it is simply one of those experiences that is difficult to describe until you recognise it in someone else’s words. I only know that mine is very much awake at the moment. I wish it could do more than make me feel. I wish it could protect, heal and put a few things right. But perhaps my part is to listen, to trust, to pray and to accept that not everything is mine to fix. As for the radar, I haven’t found the off switch. And I’m not sure I ever will.<\/p> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Do all mothers have an invisible radar, or are some of us simply wired to feel everything a little more intensely? A reflection on motherhood, distance, instinct and learning to trust life.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[818,251,820,814,813,819,812,817,815,459,811,816,821],"class_list":["post-3068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wisdom-reflections","tag-a-mothers-intuition","tag-emotional-awareness","tag-emotional-connection","tag-faith-and-motherhood","tag-letting-go-as-a-mother","tag-life-and-motherhood","tag-maternal-instinct","tag-maternal-sensitivity","tag-mother-and-child-bond","tag-motherhood","tag-motherhood-reflections","tag-parenting-adult-children","tag-personal-reflections","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t