A Letter to Myself on Mother’s Day

Emily,

I am proud of you.

You worked Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday at the hospital, and it was brutal. Nonstop phone calls. Pages of patient names. Antibiotics to steward. Constant transition around you while you tried to stay focused inside a system that felt impossible to hold together. You were stressed and shaken because you wanted to do a good job, and somewhere deep down, you knew what was being asked of you was not fully human.

You didn’t take a lunch break, but you made sure to get paid for it, babe.

This mattered.

No more giving your valuable time away for free, especially to jobs that expect so much of you.

And the important thing is: you stayed kind.

You supported the women you work with. You appreciated them. You honored them. You were not perfect, but under the circumstances, you did your best.

You snapped at Ellie for waking you up, and that sucked. You had to watch her get scared and small, and that hurt—especially on top of already feeling like you haven’t been as present for her as you want to be. But then you looked out the window and saw what she was barking at: the neighbor’s daughter and her friends coming home late from somewhere.

And suddenly it didn’t matter whether Ellie was trying to protect you, connect with the people outside, or simply hear the sound of her own voice.

You just loved her.

You held her head in your hands and felt her melt back into you, even after your sharpness, even after your anger, even in the middle of the night before another early morning at the job that feels impossible.

Today was Mother’s Day.

And even though you were exhausted and work was chaos, you still went to the flower shop your mom loves most and picked out a beautiful bouquet for her. You bought fragrant stargazer lilies for the mothers in your life. You found a card with bright colors and tiny coiled paper strips rolled into art. You made it home in time to be with your whole family—your brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews—and to remember how extraordinarily loved you are.

You handed flowers to the mothers around you, and when all the flowers had been passed out, there was still one left for you.

And it was beautiful.

Because even though you are imperfect at it, you are a mother to Ellie, and she loves you.

And even though you are not a perfect daughter, your mother loves you deeply.

And even though you are still figuring out where you belong and what you are here to do, you looked at yourself in the mirror—with your stress pimples and wild eyebrows—and you still saw beauty there.

More than that, you loved yourself for staying centered. For remaining true to yourself even when everything felt loud and exhausting and overwhelming.

Because isn’t that so much better than the alternative?

And babe, you were rewarded beyond measure.

You got to eat a little chocolate, which tasted extra good because you haven’t really been eating sweets. You sat with your parents watching SNL and laughed your ass off. You thought about what makes writing great. You read Robert Frost out loud to your mom.

You imagined what life would feel like if you were a writer.

And babe—you are a writer. You are doing it right now.

Today, you got to feel fully alive.

You stayed yourself at the hospital: talking about extractive labor while admiring videos of the baby duck your technician coworker rescued and nursed back to health after a foot injury. Encouraging your pharmacist colleague as she prepared to try remote overnight work so she could have more time for baking—the thing she actually loves.

You got to catch the gnarly resistant streptococcal pneumonia growing in the culture so the patient could receive the right treatment.

And in the same breath, you got to encourage your technician coworker’s dream of finishing her bachelor’s degree and going to vet school so she can help more tiny ducklings someday.

You sat through the hard parts without disappearing.

You didn’t numb yourself with sweets or push your brain further than it wanted to be pushed with caffeine. You didn’t abandon yourself.

You stayed.

And because you stayed, you were there later when your sweet little nieces wanted to come with you to deliver a flower to the neighbor whose dog is Ellie’s best friend—and who you love, too.

You were there when your mom noticed how beautiful the sky looked after sunset. You stood beside her at the window, staring out at the pinks and purples and yellows, the clouds layered like brushstrokes across the sky, and you told her:

This is a Mother’s Day sunset. This is for you.

You were there when your stepdad showed everyone the photo book he has spent countless hours making for his daughter, pride and love woven through every page. You got to tell him what a beautiful gift it was. And later, you got to notice the quiet ways he loves you too—taking your dishes to the sink, washing them while listening to the conversation between you and your mom, and then later honoring the way you think with a quiet nod of understanding.

Tonight, you remembered what an extraordinary gift it is to love and to feel loved.

And one day, you will feel this kind of love with a man, too.

It will feel like home when you are together.

It will feel like this.