Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

In her time de­vot­ed to her­self, Oni­ka Hen­ry en­joys the time­less com­pa­ny of the sea­side. She goes to the beach to rest, read a book, and eat her favourite gluten-free snacks be­fore sub­merg­ing in the teal wa­ters of To­ba­go, her home. While en­joy­ing na­ture’s boun­ty and treat­ing her­self from time to time, the 52 year old is a sin­gle moth­er who raised her two boys in­to men: 30-year-old Aki­no Corn­wall and 32-year-old Taariq Corn­wall. 

Be­fore de­scrib­ing how they im­pact­ed her life, Hen­ry shared what it was like to give birth to them, a process she praised as a sa­cred mile­stone.

“The whole process of bring­ing a hu­man be­ing in­to the world, for me, was mind-blow­ing. There was a sense of awe and sa­cred­ness about go­ing through that process. And ho­n­our­ing, re­spect­ing, and recog­nis­ing the fact that this is some­thing my body can do; it can hold space for, nour­ish, and bring an­oth­er hu­man be­ing in­to the world,” Hen­ry said. 

Rais­ing them up, she had to come to terms with her past, some­thing her sons had seen in her that she had not yet seen in her­self. Led to in­ves­ti­gate her­self more thor­ough­ly, Hen­ry re­alised her re­flec­tion was not hers but that of her par­ents. 

“My chil­dren point­ed out as­pects of my­self I had not yet re­solved. My own un­re­solved is­sues with my par­ent­ing and see­ing my­self bat­tling with the things (my par­ents did) that I said to my­self I would not do. I had un­con­scious­ly picked up cer­tain bi­as­es on how chil­dren were to be raised, with how we talk to our chil­dren, and be­ing vul­ner­a­ble with our chil­dren,” Hen­ry con­fessed. “I had a lot of for­giv­ing to do.” 

Taariq is a vi­su­al artist, while Aki­no is a pho­tog­ra­ph­er/video­g­ra­ph­er. They both run an en­ter­tain­ment busi­ness to­geth­er.

Hen­ry be­came a sin­gle par­ent when her sec­ond son was six months old. 

As her two boys grad­u­al­ly grew in­to adult­hood, she re­called sens­ing how her role as a moth­er changed with time.

“It took a while for me to fig­ure it out. I am no longer an au­thor­i­ty fig­ure over their bod­ies, mak­ing de­ci­sions on their be­half or for them. So, what does that mean for me as a moth­er? What is my role now? That was an­oth­er chal­lenge I had to work through,” Hen­ry said. 

To aid in tra­vers­ing these un­chart­ed wa­ters, she took the ini­tia­tive by ed­u­cat­ing her­self through read­ing self-help books and books on par­ent­ing and the de­vel­op­men­tal stages of chil­dren. 

“I have sons, and there­fore, I had to come to terms with is­sues I had about men and pa­tri­archy. I was very de­lib­er­ate and in­ten­tion­al about who and the kind of male fig­ures and role mod­els I had ex­posed them to,” Hen­ry said. 

The rea­son for her spe­cif­ic mea­sures in rais­ing her sons this way arose from the bad ex­pe­ri­ences Hen­ry had in dat­ing men and the griev­ances she re­fused to take out on them. And though they’re adults, Hen­ry said that the con­cern for their safe­ty does not go away. 

“You want to pass on cer­tain val­ues, but you want to leave room for them to be their own in­de­pen­dent and crit­i­cal thinkers,” Hen­ry said.

As a cer­ti­fied sex­ol­o­gist and sex coach, Hen­ry ed­u­cates her clients on sex health and the ways they may go about en­hanc­ing in­ti­ma­cy with their part­ners and al­so with them­selves. Al­though some may see her job as shame­ful or taboo, to Hen­ry, it pleas­es her to be a help­ful hand in up­lift­ing the back­bones of the na­tion’s fam­i­lies. 

“Moth­ers in par­tic­u­lar, we still car­ry a huge bur­den ... We still have to work, and then we’re tak­ing care of our chil­dren and our­selves. And not hav­ing enough time for self-care and to re­ju­ve­nate,” Hen­ry said.

Aside from not hav­ing enough time to re­set, com­mu­ni­ty sup­port, ac­cord­ing to Hen­ry, is es­sen­tial to moth­ers in safe­guard­ing their men­tal health. 

“What I think is miss­ing is the sup­port that al­lows moth­ers to have time to take care of them­selves so that their cup is full and run­ning over so they have enough ex­tra to take care of oth­ers, in ad­di­tion to tak­ing care of them­selves. So, for me, it is about see­ing a lot of women who are over­whelmed, whose men­tal health is not in the best place be­cause they’re do­ing so many things on their own; it’s more chal­leng­ing as a sin­gle par­ent,” Hen­ry said. 

In her dai­ly prac­tice of­fer­ing sex ther­a­py and coun­selling to her clients, Hen­ry has found that the high stress lev­els of run­ning a house­hold and en­sur­ing the needs of oth­ers are ful­filled can ad­verse­ly af­fect the phys­i­cal in­ti­ma­cy women have with their part­ners. It is this con­stant sense of hav­ing to sur­vive that “shuts down” a woman’s body from en­gag­ing in ro­man­tic ac­tiv­i­ties.

“Moms need self-care and com­mu­ni­ty care. She needs time away from all the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of work and home life so that she can be in touch with her­self. For me, it shows up in that part of their life when there is that lack of in­ti­ma­cy, lack of con­nect­ing on an erot­ic and sex­u­al lev­el with their part­ners, just be­cause life is over­whelm­ing,” Hen­ry said.

And while moth­ers must have com­mu­ni­ty sup­port, their hus­bands and boyfriends al­so need to step up in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with their loved ones about what’s miss­ing for their phys­i­cal and men­tal well-be­ing. 

“I think men need to ac­tu­al­ly sit down and have that con­ver­sa­tion with their fe­male part­ners about what they need to feel nour­ished and what kind of help would make the whole job and role of moth­er­hood eas­i­er for them. [Men] man­ag­ing those house­hold re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, like com­ing home and meet­ing your house cleaned up and food pre­pared ... it is very sexy. It’s a big turn-on,” Hen­ry laughed.  

When asked what her mes­sage would be to the na­tion’s moth­ers, Hen­ry re­it­er­at­ed the in­valu­able im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ty sup­port and time de­vot­ed to self.

“You need to have your tribe, folks who have your back, look­ing out for you. And who are al­so do­ing some of the work of ‘screen­ing’ the peo­ple you’re bring­ing in­to your life. Peo­ple can present re­al­ly well in the be­gin­ning, some­times peo­ple present so well that you’re not go­ing to pick up on those red flags be­fore it is too late. Trust your in­tu­ition, nev­er do this alone,” Hen­ry ad­vised.

Oni­ka Hen­ry re­sides in Sig­nal Hill, To­ba­go where she con­tin­ues to cham­pi­on the needs of moth­ers so that they may show up as their most au­then­tic selves for them­selves and oth­ers.

She is the founder of O’Hen­ry Con­sul­tan­cy Ser­vices Ltd. For moth­ers and women with­out chil­dren, she rec­om­mends these books for learn­ing more about ac­cess­ing the full ex­tent of plea­sure: The Arts of Se­duc­tion by Seema Anand, and Aphro­disi­ac: The Herbal Path to Healthy Sex­u­al Ful­fill­ment and Vi­tal Liv­ing by Kim­ber­ly Gal­lagher.