05/10/2026
Mine was 12 years ago. I still feel it in my chest.
She was seven. On the floor. Crying about her socks.
I was 34 — separated, grieving, trying to rebuild a life I no longer recognized.
We had a long drive ahead of us.
We were already running late. And I was holding myself together.
We got in the car.
And I lost it.
I yelled in a way that wasn't me.
Not the mom I was. Not the mom I am.
Both of my daughters sat in the back seat — silent, both crying — while I unleashed on the one who had simply done what seven-year-olds do.
I drove.
And somewhere on that drive, in the silence I had created, I heard it:
"Who am I to be furious at my child for melting down — when I am too?"
I had taken her meltdown personally.
She was just expressing herself.
I was the adult. And I had melted down right alongside her —
I just aimed mine at the people I loved most.
That night, I made my self and my girls a promise.
One I've kept for over a decade:
"You are not responsible for how I feel. If I am having a hard day, I will tell you. I will ask for patience. I will love you through it. But you will never carry me."
I used to call that morning my biggest failure as a mother.
Now I call it the morning I started becoming one.
Here is what I want you to hear today, mama:
The moment you keep replaying — the one you can't forgive yourself for —
is not the proof that you're failing.
It is the proof that you have already grown.
Because the mom who carries that moment is no longer the mom who created it.
She has already become someone new.
You did that.
You.
Put the guilt down today. Pick the lesson back up tomorrow.
We grow alongside our kids. That's the gift. To have the opportunity to repair what we did, and to practice grace and self acceptance..
even when we have these moments.
xoxo, Happy Mother's Day. 💛