Mother’s Pride

It had been a difficult end to the week. The kind of week where you realise you have been holding a great deal for other people and have not quite noticed how tired you are until the pace slows down.

Somewhere in that tiredness I remembered something that used to be very simple and very reliable for me when I was younger: going to the cinema.

When I was an adolescent, the cinema was one of my favourite places to retreat to. There was something about sitting in the dark with a room full of strangers, all of us watching the same story unfold, that created a strange kind of peace. For two hours the outside world paused. The demands of everyday life softened. You could allow yourself to be absorbed by another world for a while.

The memory came back clearly enough that I decided to follow it. I bought a ticket for the next film that was about to start. It was called Mother’s Pride. I did not look it up beforehand or read anything about it. I simply walked into the screening with the same quiet curiosity I used to have as a teenager.

The film turned out to be a warm British comedy-drama set in a small West Country village. At the centre of the story is a family trying to keep their pub alive after the death of the mother who had held everything together. In an attempt to save the place they decide to brew their own ale and enter the Great British Beer Awards. It is an idea that is both hopeful and slightly improbable, which is exactly why it works.

The pub becomes the heart of the story. It is not only a place where people drink but a gathering point where village life unfolds. People argue there, tease each other, share grief, celebrate small victories. The film captures that particular British familiarity with a lot of affection.

What I loved most was the humour. Not the kind that tries to dominate the room, but the kind that appears naturally when you place a group of slightly eccentric characters together and allow them to be themselves. The characters feel recognisable and deeply human. They are flawed, occasionally stubborn, sometimes a little absurd, but they are easy to care about.

There was also something unexpectedly personal for me in the setting. The film was shot in parts of the West Country, including Somerset. I spent a few years of my own schooling there and seeing that landscape on screen stirred up a quiet wave of memory. The hills, the villages, the rhythm of life there all felt strangely familiar. Films sometimes do that. They open small doors into parts of your life you have not visited for a long time.

As the story unfolded I became aware of something else as well. Sitting in the cinema felt deeply familiar, almost like returning to a place I had once known well. It felt as though my adolescent self had quietly joined me in the seat.

In Gestalt therapy we often notice how earlier parts of ourselves remain present in our lives even as we grow older. The younger version of me who used to sit in cinemas for the comfort of stories seemed to be present that evening, enjoying the experience as much as I was.

By the time the film ended and the lights came up, I realised I felt lighter than when I had arrived. Nothing in my external world had changed. The week was still the week it had been. Yet something inside me had softened.

There is something quietly restorative about stepping into a story that reminds you of the ordinary goodness in people. Mother’s Pride carries that spirit. It holds grief, family tension and the messiness of life, but it does so with warmth and humour rather than cynicism.

It left me thinking about the small things we once knew how to do instinctively when we were younger — the places we went to breathe, the rituals that helped us reset.

As adults we often move away from them without noticing. Yet sometimes the most restorative act is simply remembering what once worked and allowing ourselves to return to it.

For me, this week, that place was the cinema.

And my inner adolescent seemed very pleased with the outing. We had a good hang-out session.