I smile when I think of my mom.<\/p>\n
Mother’s Day weekend is here.\u00a0 A day to celebrate mom’s everywhere.\u00a0 Mom’s, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, friends.\u00a0 \u00a0Even Mama Oprah.\u00a0 I know I’m not the only one who calls her that.\u00a0 She is NOT a mom.\u00a0 She’s never had kids, but so many people around the world call her mama Oprah because she is that nurturing, love giving figure.\u00a0 Dishing out advice and helping us grow.\u00a0 So many people to be celebrated this weekend.\u00a0 Maybe even a nod to O.\u00a0 Never underestimate the value of your life on someone else’s or fail to appreciate the impact someone else has had on you.<\/p>\n
Tell me something good about your mom or that person in your life that filled that role for you.\u00a0 What are they like?\u00a0 Or what were they like?\u00a0 What did they teach you?\u00a0 How did they inspire you?\u00a0 How did they change you or help you grow?<\/p>\n
My mom died in a car accident with my brother and sister when I was just shy of 19.\u00a0 This year will mark 30 Mother’s Days without her.\u00a0 I miss her every day, and no matter how hard I try to keep her memory alive, those memories fade over the years.\u00a0 The only picture I have of the two of us, was when I was about 12.\u00a0 \u00a0I treasure that picture.\u00a0 I have very few pictures of her.<\/p>\n
I never got to know her as an adult.\u00a0 I never got to see her get old.\u00a0 It was strange when I turned the same age as her, and then every year as I get older I appreciate that I got more out of this world than she did.<\/p>\n
I do a lot of reflecting on Mother’s Day.\u00a0 I think about my mom.\u00a0 I wonder how much I look like her, act like her, sound like her. I want so much to see her in me.<\/p>\n
I smile when I do something that she taught me.\u00a0 \u00a0I smile when I dance in the living room and think of all the times she did that.\u00a0 Her love of birds and flowers, gardening, garage sales and soap operas.\u00a0 Her “stories”.\u00a0 \u00a0I share all that.<\/p>\n
I wonder if she knew how much I appreciated her.\u00a0 Because as a teenager, I probably did a lot of complaining.\u00a0 (smile) Complaining about being asked to do something I didn’t want to do. Hello, dinner dishes.\u00a0 Hated that job.\u00a0 Complaining when she tried to teach me something about life and I didn’t want to believe she knew anything or could actually be right.\u00a0 We never want our parents to be RIGHT, do we? (smile) It’s funny, in the moment, you don’t realize the importance of it, until much later when you look back and realize the truth of it.<\/p>\n
If I could see her right now – I would hug her so tight and thank her for everything I never did before.\u00a0 Tell her she was right about so many things.\u00a0 I would ask her if she was proud of me, my kids, my husband, my life.<\/p>\n
I think of my mom and I smile.\u00a0 My mom loved her kids and her family and it was always important.\u00a0 Our house was always full of life and family.\u00a0 I miss that the most.<\/p>\n
I hope you find a reason to smile this weekend.\u00a0 \u00a0If you are a mom, I hope you look at your kids and smile, and remind yourself you’re doing it all right.\u00a0 You are doing your best and that is all anybody can ask.\u00a0 If you think of your mom or that special someone that took her place, I hope you smile.\u00a0 And I hope this weekend is a special one for you no matter what that means for you or how you chose to celebrate.<\/p>\n
My three kids are everything to me.\u00a0 They make me smile every single day.\u00a0 (for the most part)\u00a0 \u00a0There’s the moments where the cereal box is empty, the toilet paper roll is unchanged, dishes everywhere.\u00a0 \u00a0When you have to be the bad guy.\u00a0 \u00a0Those moments are hard.\u00a0 But know that someday, they too will look back on those moments with a smile and say (under their breath) “mom was right”.<\/p>\n
I am thankful I had my mom for 18 years and what she taught me in that time.\u00a0 I hope that I am the very best of her and I hope I pass that on to my kids.\u00a0 \u00a0I’m also thankful for the nearly 30 years I’ve had my second mom who has been my side through a lot of life’s ups and downs.\u00a0 Who has been there to cheer me on and cheer me up when needed.\u00a0 Not a replacement for my mom.\u00a0 But an addition to her.\u00a0 I’m so lucky to have had her in my life, and still to this day.\u00a0 I can’t wait to sit and have coffee or tea with her again and sit and talk about anything and everything and feel that hug that I am so desperately in need of.<\/p>\n
It’s taken me a lot of years to get to a point where I wasn’t feeling broken and sad on Mother’s Day.\u00a0 A long journey of healing to get to this point.\u00a0 I will smell the lilacs and think of my mom this weekend and maybe dance to some David Lee Roth like she used to do. And play a little Beatles “Hey Jude” one of her favourites.\u00a0 And remember all that was good.<\/p>\n
And smile.<\/p>\n
Happy Mother’s Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I smile when I think of my mom. Mother’s Day weekend is here.\u00a0 A day to celebrate mom’s everywhere.\u00a0 Mom’s, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, friends.\u00a0 \u00a0Even Mama Oprah.\u00a0 I know I’m not the only one who calls her that.\u00a0 She is NOT a mom.\u00a0 She’s never had kids, but so many people around the world call","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":14300,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"featured_img_display":"Yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1082,1378,4777,4429],"class_list":["post-14551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afternoons","tag-loss","tag-mom","tag-mothers-day","tag-motherless-daughter"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-19 02:34:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"react_link":"https:\/\/foxfm.com\/blogs\/afternoons\/2021\/05\/the-view-from-here-tell-me-something-good-about-your-mom\/","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfgxfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfgxfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfgxfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfgxfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfgxfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfgxfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14554,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfgxfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14551\/revisions\/14554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfgxfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfgxfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfgxfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cfgxfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}