What’s the best advice your mom has ever given you: Voices from The Listening Post

Editor’s Note: ViaNolaVie is working with the founder and producers of the The Listening Post. TLP is a community media project that aims to meet residents deep in their own neighborhoods, on porches, at libraries, in barbershops, and start conversations about local news in New Orleans and both get and share important information about life in the city. 

Each week on their WWNO radio segment, TLP explores issues ranging from healthcare and WhoDat, to tattoos and transportation. Listeners are able to contribute via TLP recording devices at local libraries or via a text messaging service, which then became source material for these programs. This piece aired on May 9, 2014.

To celebrate Mother’s Day we asked: 

• What’s the best advice your mom has ever given you?

​Here’s what you told us:

• “’You never worry about the right things’ and ‘never get drunk at a work party.’”
• “Be kind and listen, everyone has a story.”
• “It takes all kinds”
• “If you can imagine it, you can make it happen.”
• “Go to bed.”
• “This too shall pass.”
• “(In broken Italian) Mangia, mangia! (Intended translation: Eat, eat!)”
• “Quit that job.”
• “Get good grades or else.”
• “The best advice was just to be yourself and people will love you for you.”
• “Be mindful and enjoy life.” 
• “Wrap up.”
• “There are only two things you’ve got to do in life: stay black & die ”
• “I am rearing you for the world not for me.”
• “Don’t do anything in the dark you wouldn’t do in the light.”
• “A stranger is a friend you haven’t met yet”
• “Always treat everyone with kindness no matter who they are.”
• “A mother’s advice: Act like you’ve been somewhere.”
• “You don’t ask, you don’t get”
• “Better safe than sorry”
• “If mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy. ”
• “My mom always encouraged me by telling me in life you are going to face many challenges but always do the right thing and always take care of your business and cry later. I will always have fond memories of my Mama”
• “My mother told me, ‘You are smarter than you think you are.’ I thought she was trying to trick me, but she could see the potential and strength I did not know I had. Thanks Mom!!”
• “It’s better to be happy than it is to be right. ”
• “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck ”
• “Be yourself, trust yourself”
• “My mom: ‘Who am I to tell you what to do? Give it time, sweetie. You will know. And I love you no matter what you decide.’”
• “Do what you love and the money will follow.”
• “Never let anyone jerk you around.”