Sweet mothers, have you had these days? Those moments when you get just a breath of perspective about the tenderness found in the motherhood days? I make it a point to celebrate the little things – the simple moments in life. Here’s a story about a night last year when I realized the gift found in the moment of today.

I knew it was coming.

Samuel, my little Samuel, was wandering around the living room in those favorite monkey pajamas with the orange super soft shirt. Every once in a while he’d put his head down on the couch and take a quick rest. I was watching him. That little one, up a bit too late, trying so hard to stay awake.

Samuel? Samuel do you want to rock with mama?

He looked up, in those sweet little jammies that I splurged on just weeks before, and shook his head no.

Wake. Wake time.

I let him play while glimpses of the winter sun faded into the west. He kept playing, sneaking little peeks at me sitting in the rocking chair watching him, hoping for just a couple more minutes of time before bed.

Samuel.

Little eyes look at me. Worried, just a bit. They were eyes that knew the inevitable bedtime words were coming.

Samuel. Samuel come rock in the chair with mama.

Instead of fighting he simply came. Running through the room, over to me, and let me scoop him up. I gathered up that little one, nestled him in my arms, and started to rock him. He rested his head, that head with the hair on it that never likes to rest flat,  on my shoulder, and
I patted his back.

We rocked.

Back and forth. And back and forth. And back in forth.

I knew it would be short.

He’s growing up. He’s busy and sees what he wants to do. I knew, I knew right then I was to savor these early evening minutes of him being absolutely content to rock with me. Those moments of him sitting in my lap with his head resting on my shoulder are the little things that matter moments of life.

Remember.

Remember him. Remember him now. Little, in my arms, rocking away. Wanting to be with me.

And then, just as quickly as I had the moment, the moment was done.

No bed. Not tired. Wake time, mama.

I gently let him down, and watched those little monkey printed pants wander back to the pile of John Deere tractors in the corner, and I sighed just a bit. It was that mixture of content motherhood sigh with the reality that those motherhood moments are fleeting. It was that nostalgic sigh that we as mothers collective breathe as we see our littles growing and becoming independent.

Soon these rocking days will be done.

So tonight, tonight, tonight I rested in those minutes where I was blessed to rock my Samuel.

Grab those moments, I tell myself over and over.

Grab them. Slow down.

Slow down.

After a couple more minutes, I gathered him up, carried him up the stairs and brought him to his room. Now, there was no more fighting that inevitable it’s time for bed surrender. We stood at the edge of his bed, and I sang him a little song, and then tucked him up.

Love you, Samuel. 

Love you, Mama.

Forever.

******

How about you? What are moments that you simply want to gather and remember? They’re the little moments that matter in the broad scheme of motherhood. 

Those hard days happen.

Yesterday I wrote about the throw in the towel days and why they’re inevitable in the spectrum of motherhood.

Sometimes they string together to form a hard week which strings together to form one of those seasons that becomes harder than we imagined. And yet, even in those moments where life is just a bit more challenging than normal, we’re left with the responsibility to mother. We can’t really throw in the towel, now can we? We still have little ones pulling at our legs and asking us why and not wanting to take naps. Or they’re older and they think we’re dumb or the worst parent ever and they slam the door.

Those moments happen. We, you, me, we just need to get through.

Here are four things to remember on those hard mothering days.

1. Give yourself grace. Grace is such an easy word to say, but an incredibly hard thing to remember. It’s easy to look at the mistakes made and to not remember that we too, as mothers, are human. You will make mistakes. You’ll get exasperated over the spilled milk, the messy room, the cries over not liking dinner. But, those mistakes don’t define you – you can learn from them. You must also remember to give yourself grace. Just because you messed up at nine in the morning doesn’t mean that ten in the morning has to not work out. That’s the beauty of grace – it lets the past go, it looks forward to the future, and embraces the gift in today. Grace is a minute by minute gift that you can not only give to yourself but also to your children.
2. Focus on one thing at a time. I believe that overwhelm happens when we have too many things that we think we need to get done yesterday. Then instead of being able to focus on completing one thing well we see everything that we need to do or maybe should have done, forget to give ourselves grace, and then get stuck in a cycle of thinking we can’t get anything done. Find one thing to do and do it well. Not a dozen things. One. Maybe it’s reading to your toddler and ignoring the dishes for the moment. Maybe it’s doing the dishes and ignoring the email. Maybe it’s doing your email. Maybe it’s just simply sitting in the rocking chair and rocking the baby.But do one thing. And then one more thing. And then one more. That’s the focus in those moments.
3. Practice gratitude. Ah yes, gratitude. During those hard days it is so easy to see every single thing that isn’t working. I tell you – on my hard days I will notice the rip in my living room couch, will hate my hair, will be unhappy that the laundry isn’t folded, don’t like the mess, wish it was sunny, and on and on. It’s easy to forget the perspective of the beautiful gift of normal. Yes, normal. When a crisis hits we so often wish for normal. When my son Samuel was in the hospital after he was diagnosed with Celiac Disease the one thing that I wished for was normal. Normal is beautiful, but often forgotten. So practice gratitude. It’s an art, really. It’s a skill to look beyond the challenging things and to seek out the good. That’s the whole finding joy aspect of my life. Joy isn’t something that just plops in our laps – joy is seeking out the good in lives that so often are imperfect.
   It’s there. Maybe it’s the sun streaming in your window. Or in the smile of your toddler with the messy face. Or in the flowers that your friend brought you on your really crummy day. Or in coffee – because truthfully, that brings me joy. Look for it. Practice gratitude – it really does help change perspective.
4. Be real. This times infinity. How many times have you ached when you’re having a bad day as you mutter to your friends that you’re fine? You know what? Maybe, just maybe, maybe you should utter that you’re having one of those real parenting days. The days that aren’t as rosy. Let’s be real. Let’s be a generation of parents who decide to work together parenting. You will have great days too. You will have normal days. Lousy days. Fabulous days. Creative days. Days where you are on the top of the world. (Or at least the laundry pile). Days that are just days. Whatever you have – they are all normal. So let’s be real. Let’s pull up our parenting bootstraps together, let’s brush each other off, and let’s not parent alone.Motherhood wasn’t meant to be a journey in aloneness. Motherhood is meant to be shared. And that means linking arms and being real. You can do it. You totally can – even on those hard days.

What tips would you add to help you get through those inevitably hard motherhood days?

You’ve had those days.

I know it. I’ve had them. They’re the days when the clock has barely hit 8:10am and you’re already feeling like you’d love to throw in the hypothetical towel of parenting. You know that towel? The towel that has already dealt with kids that don’t want to get up, kids that don’t like their breakfast, lost homework, crying toddlers, babies that refuse to be anywhere but your left hip, burnt toast, alarms missed, and spilled milk.

You’d throw in the towel, but it’s in the laundry. And, if your home is anything like mine at times, it’s probably in the washing machine in the load that you forgot to switch the night before.

Those throw in the towel days of motherhood. Of parenthood, really.

They are inevitable.

Let me write that for you again.

They are inevitable.

Oh my goodness there are beautiful days tucked in our days as parents. They are the days that we dream about – days where the kids go to bed without fuss, where the living room looks perfect with the throw pillows tucked just right, where there are finger paint projects on the fridge, and we’re simply content. Thank goodness for those days, right? They are beautiful. And as I tell my readers, and my friends, and you, write those days down on your calendar. Circle it and write the words - today was a great day – down.

You know why?

Because there is a really great chance that the very next day will make you wonder what on earth you are doing as a mother. That will be the day when you can’t even get out of bed without there being an immediate crisis. That will be the day when the bowl with cereal with milk gets splattered all over because the kids were fighting over who got to see the back of the cereal box and onto the pile of papers left on the table.

Yesterday it wouldn’t have bothered you, and yet today, today it wants to make you find that well stained parenting towel and to throw it in and to maybe whisper or yell or say, “I quit.”

Having a throw in the towel day doesn’t make you a bad parent just like having the idyllic day doesn’t make you a perfect parent. They’re just days in a collection of days that gather together to form a life and a parenthood journey. We all have those collections, those patterns that are woven together. We may all be parents, all mothers, all have similar or different stories, and yet each of ours is beautifully unique and independently our own. And friends, we all, have those throw in the towel days of motherhood.

So you have that throw in the towel day. Or morning. Or week. You know what you can do? You can learn from it. You can learn from it and grow. And you can be real about it – those days simply are part of a normal, real, motherhood journey. They’re the days that really make us stronger. They unearth the brave part of us, the superhero tucked within, and they can make us want to scream and run around the block yelling I am mom hear me roar. Or maybe that’s just me.

We can learn. We can grow. We can thrive.

Now, pick up that motherhood towel, and wipe the counters. You are a brave mother, a strong mother, a fighter, a perfect tucker into bed at night, and lover of your children.

The days all matter. The awesome. The good. The throw in the towel feeling days.

It’s all part of this amazing, exhausting, rewarding, and totally awesome journey called motherhood.

What is your strategy for dealing with throw in the towel days? Mine? I love to read a book with them, watch a movie, or sometimes load them in the car and drive to Starbucks. How about you?

Over the past several years I’ve written dozens of letters and articles to mothers. They’ve been open letters talking about our fears of failures, our worries, our wonderings if what we’re doing really matters, our successes, and our giving of self. These simple notes, filled with words of bravery, encouragement, and we’re in this together let’s pull up our bootstraps have reached over a million readers.

They’re not full of quick fourteen easy steps in three weeks spending only two hours a day ways to becoming a perfect parent. They’re not lists of things we should be doing or shouldn’t be doing or forgot to be doing. Instead, they’re full of words celebrating mothers and declaring that normal moms, real moms, in their imperfect yet very much trying lives, are actually truly enough.

So I wrote about why moms are enough early one July morning in the Starbucks where I love to write. It’s a cool Starbucks – it’s the place where they know my name, they know my drink, and more than that they’re my friends. I sat at my round table, the table where I always sit, and I poured my heart onto the dashboard on my screen. I wrote about why moms are enough – enough in their every day normal diaper changing, wiping noses, driving to soccer lives.

And that post Why Being a Mom is Enough post went crazy.

They really were simple words. Words declaring the truth about motherhood.

Words about why what you are doing today, in your normal every day motherhood life, truly makes a difference. Yes, of course, you could argue with me that it is just doing the dishes, just washing faces, just vacuuming the floor, just folding socks, just reading the same book again and again, just doing anything in the crazy role of motherhood.

There really is no just.

We just live in a culture that has tended to take the normal beautiful motherhood moments and has added layers of to-do lists to them. No longer are there just simple birthday parties – now there are boards and boards and boards on Pinterest telling us as mothers how to do the perfect birthday party.

The boards are good.

But, they are just boards full of ideas. Just like there are books, magazines, blogs, Facebook updates, television shows, podcasts, classes, and more telling us different ways to become better, to do more, and to help with the parenting journey. The information is good. It’s great. We can learn from it, but we must remember the truth.

The truth?

Your kids will remember you – not the perfect birthday party, perfectly decorated room, perfect schedule, or whatever thing that we think we need to complete to be a good mom. They will remember you. They will remember the times where you sat with them in the car and talked to them and built them up before they started that new class. Or the nights that you stopped and rocked the baby to sleep. Or the little hugs before class, the making of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the notes on the fridge, the cheering from the sidelines, the loving even when you felt like crying, real life, real giving mom moments.

It’s not the stuff.

It’s the giving of self.

It’s the normal you are enough moments of motherhood that matter. They are the moments that I celebrate. They are the times that I write about in my Dear Mom Letters. I don’t want to celebrate perfection – I want to celebrate real.

I want to celebrate you. And the mom next door. The mom working two jobs. The single mom. The new mom. The mom exhausted but still smiling. Mom. All moms.

Real mom, you, right now, are enough. You are enough even when you feel like you don’t measure up or that you’re failing or you don’t know what to do next. You are simply enough.

Isn’t that a freeing thought? Isn’t it a beautiful thing to realize that so often those little things that you do are truly the big beautiful things of life? Those rocking chair moments, the tucking them up in bed, the mixing of chocolate into milk, all of that matters. So incredibly much. Those are the being a mom enough moments of life.

So sweet real mom, my heart for you today is that you can begin to be reminded about how what you are doing right now in your perfectly imperfect life makes a difference in the life of a child. Your child. So hold your chin up high. Butter that bread, pull the t-shirt on over their head, tie the shoes, buckle them up, grab your latte, tuck them in bed at night, and just keep fighting.

You are a brave mother.

And you are most certainly enough.

What little thing that you do every single day do you think you’ll remember once your children are grown?