Star of the Month: Etana learns patience from motherhood

As an artiste, one can find themselves swamped with recording and rehearsal sessions, which can be tiring; and tour schedules, which can be gruelling. For those who are parents, it is often described as near-unbearable leaving their children behind for weeks at a time. But the show must go on. The Star of the Month, Etana, the Strong One, has maintained her steadfast stature in the music industry with three little ones of her own.

"It's hard. The hardest thing for me is leaving the house and watching the little one. The older ones, they're like, 'Yeah yeah bye, I love you!' But the little one, she don't get it yet. She nuh understand all together how it works," Etana told THE STAR.

"She would cry and used to go for her shoes and ... stuff like that kind of breaks your heart to see," she continued.

Thanks to technology, applications like FaceTime and instant messaging platforms make up for some conversation lost.

"If I go away for more than a couple of weeks, after a while FaceTiming ... she'll walk away and give bad eyes. Vex!"

FULL ATTENTION

To manage those moments when her youngest child blatantly expresses her disdain for the distance, Etana puts particular boundaries in place to ensure that the children get her full attention when at home.

"When I get home, nobody can reach me on the phone. If I do pick up my phone, it's specifically to tweet and put it down," she revealed.

Etana got pregnant with her first child before finishing high school. Regardless, her relentless spirit drove her to collect her diploma while with child.

"You can never be prepared to have a child. Everybody come with them own spirit in this world. I feel like a mother knows, when the child is born, everything that she needs to know. It just comes to you. You learn to deal with each personality differently, and love them the same. It's incredible," Etana said.

She also shared the biggest lesson she has learnt since becoming a mother. "I got from them, patience. I can have them walk around the room, them and dem cousins, ah scream and tear down everything and it doesn't affect me, not one bit!"

Etana's children are 16, five and 1 1/2 years old.