Sometimes we forget our mothers were once little kids.

Little girls with secret fears. Girls who fell in love for the first time. Girls who dreamed bigger than Brooklyn. Girls who carried heartbreak before they carried us.

And then somehow, through all of it, they became the people who braided our hair, packed our lunches, stayed up when we were sick, answered the late-night phone calls, and held entire families together with exhausted grace.

Motherhood can make women seem mythic. Limitless. But before they were our safe place, they were someone’s daughter trying to figure out the world too.

I think part of growing up is finally seeing our mothers fully. Not just for what they gave us, but for who they had to become in order to survive.

Happy Mother’s Day to the women still healing, still hoping, still mothering through it all.

And to my own babies, thank you for making me one.