Also shared as Issue #37 of Modern Mom Notes, my weekly newsletter for moms navigating the beautiful chaos of early parenthood. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every week
There is something about this day that makes everything feel a little more tender.
Not louder or bigger or more significant than any other Sunday. Just quieter somehow. Like the ordinary moments you live inside every day suddenly have a little more light on them. The small hand reaching for yours. The chaos of breakfast. The way they say your name, over and over, in the way that only they do.
That is where I find myself today. Noticing the ordinary and feeling the weight of how extraordinary it actually is.
What This Day Really Is
Mother's Day has a way of making us look both directions at once.
Back at how far we have come. The versions of ourselves we have shed and grown into. The moments we almost did not make it through and somehow did anyway.
And forward at everything still unfolding. The children still becoming. The mother we are still learning to be.
Wherever you are in that journey today, I want you to know something. You do not have to have it figured out to be doing it beautifully. The showing up, the trying again, the loving them through your own imperfection. That is the whole thing. That is all of it.
"You do not have to be a perfect mother. You just have to be theirs."
A Little Note From Me
Modern Mom Notes started as a quiet corner of the internet where I could be honest about the toddler years. The chaos and the wonder and the questions I did not know I would be asking myself.
And somewhere along the way, it became something more. A community. A conversation. A weekly reminder that none of us are doing this alone.
As a gift to every mother reading this and honestly to myself through this journey too, we are growing. Modern Mom Notes will continue to be your weekly home for the toddler years and everything in between. And alongside it, Candor Parent is becoming a wider space for content that meets you across every phase of parenting. Not just toddlerhood. The beginning too. And everything that comes after.
Because parenting does not fit neatly into one season. And neither should the support around it.
Something Special Coming to Candor Parent
As part of growing Candor Parent into a wider space for parenting content, we are bringing in expert voices across every phase of the journey. Sleep, overall development, emotional resilience, mental health, and more.
This week a sleep consultant shares her practical, warm guidance on sleep in the first year of a baby's life. If you are in that season, know someone who is, or simply want to understand what you wish you had known the first time around, this one will be worth a read.
Aradhana Dayal
🌐 Subscribe to Candor Parent → so you do not miss any new ones in the future. And I would love for you to share your own experience in the comments. What worked for you in that first year? What do you wish someone had told you? Your story might be exactly what another parent needs to read.
Before You Go
To every mother reading this today.
The new mom running on no sleep. The toddler mom in the thick of the big feelings and the bigger love. The mom growing a new life while holding everything else together. The mom who is doing this for the second or third time and somehow finding new layers of herself each time.
You are seen. You are valued. And you are so much more than the hard days make you feel.
Happy Mother's Day. 🤍
Drop in the comments — what has motherhood taught you this year that you did not expect? I would genuinely love to know.
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Until next time,