In plain words
She was weeping aloud. The whole inner palace was nothing but weeping! And Lakṣmaṇa went to bow to Sumitrā. Then she: “Lakṣmaṇa, my son! Do not think, ‘I am going to the forest.’ That is not a forest. Ayodhyā without Sītā and Rāma is itself the forest. The forest in which Sītā and Rāma dwell is Ayodhyā itself. So, even though you are in the forest, feel that you are in Ayodhyā itself. It is Rāma who is your father. It is Sītā who is your mother. See to it that nothing whatever hinders your service to them,” she counselled him. Would any mother speak like this? “By the boon Daśaratha gave Kaikeyī, only Rāma has to go to the forest. You need not go”: so she could have held Lakṣmaṇa back. But Sumitrā did not do so. Every virtue a mother should have was seen in her.
Lakṣmaṇa's wife was Ūrmilā. Like Sumitrā, she too was a woman of great virtue. No one had the sacrifice and the generosity she had. Once he went to the forest, there would be no coming back for fourteen years, after all! So Lakṣmaṇa went to tell her once before he left. At that time she was sitting in her room, painting in colours the scene of the coronation of Sītā and Rāma. Her intention was to send that painting to her father Janaka. Just then Lakṣmaṇa went in and called out, rather loudly, “Ūrmilā!” She was startled and stood up. As she rose, all the paint beside her spilled over the picture she had drawn. “Alas, I have spoilt it!” she grieved. Then Lakṣmaṇa: “Ūrmilā! Do not be sad. Kaikeyī has spoilt Rāma's coronation. Your husband Lakṣmaṇa has spoilt the coronation picture you painted. So you need not grieve,” he said. He told her what had happened, and said that he was going to the forest for the service of Rāma. She agreed gladly. She did not grieve that her husband was leaving her and going. Not in the least did she press him to take her along too.