I was pleased to be a young mom. I had my first son at 23 when I was still a baby myself and my third child was born when I was 29.
With my first two I am one of the younger moms with kids our age.
It was never hard for me to relate to my kids and what it was like at their age because it hadn’t been so long that I didn’t remember.
I gave up my life for my kids.
Did I need to do that?
Probably not, and yet it seemed like being a mom and a wife was all I could handle. In hindsight, I don’t think the kids were the issue… but that’s another story.
Having babies and staying home was the hardest work I have ever done, but being a mom has been my most favourite role in life.
This year, for the first time in 19 years, I started to wish that I hadn’t had my kids so young.
I always thought I would have so much life left to live when my kids were grown… and now I feel like I still have so much life left to live after they leave. I’m going to have to figure out what that looks like without them and I don’t really want to do that.
Not only do I love my kids like every parent does… but I genuinely like them.
On this Mother’s Day I feel so grateful for the kids I was given, while at the same time, so lucky to have had such a great role model for how to be the kind of mom that I am.
We have this idea of what a single mom looks like. In the movies she is always sacrificing and working her hands to the bone, stressed out, unsupported, and a total underdog.
That’s not what my reality is like because I have greatness on either side of me.
How lucky am I?
I hope you take this day to notice what’s great about where you came from, and who you’ve gathered up in your life since.
Mothers aren’t always the people who birthed us, or raised us… but they are the people who nurture us and guide us through life.
Today is about giving thanks to those people.
Happy Mother’s Day?