I was incredibly lucky to grow up with—and still have—a number of amazing mother figures in my life.
There is my actual mom, Rose; my Aunt Julie; and the mother of my two best childhood friends, whom I call Co. All three women helped shape who I am, and they gave me wonderful examples of the many different ways motherhood and love can show up.
Co’s daughters are still my best friends—and essentially my non-biological sisters—to this day.
When I was deep in the trenches of early motherhood, one of them shared a piece of advice Co had given her. I think it was around the transition to solid foods, when I was being inundated with toddler-feeding accounts on Instagram and it was slowly deteriorating my mental health.
Co had told her:
“Not every mom has to be good at everything. Pick one strength, and focus on that.”
For my best friend, that strength is reading. She grew up constantly buried in history books—the kind of child who was voluntarily reading about Vikings in second grade—so she focuses on sharing that love of reading with her daughters. She prioritizes time to read with them and surrounds them with books.
The advice sounds simple. Of course we cannot be good at everything.
But especially in the age of Instagram, it often does not feel that way.
You are apparently supposed to create thoughtfully curated “morning baskets” for a peaceful start to the day, serve your child one hundred foods before age one whether they enjoy any of them or not, and organize your diaper cart so beautifully that it belongs on a showroom floor.
Otherwise, you are probably failing.
Which is why the second part of Co’s advice is the part that really stayed with me.
Instead of focusing on everything we are not doing, what do we uniquely bring to our children’s lives?
For me, it is creating experiences and bringing people together.
I am the person in our friend group who gets on the phone at 8:00 a.m. to purchase eighteen tickets to Disney on Ice so all the kids can have great seats together. I keep track of when a special exhibit is coming to a museum or when there is a kid-friendly outdoor concert. Email organization is absolutely not my strength, but when an announcement appears for a family night at Lincoln Park Zoo or a Mr. Dave’s music morning, I am somehow immediately on it.
This is my thing.
And I think I understood just how much it mattered to me after I broke my leg while staying with my in-laws in Florida.
A brief public-service announcement: keep the decorative pillows from the bed off the floor at night, people.
At the time, my daughter was still learning to walk. She loved holding both of my hands while she practiced. After I was injured and using a wheelchair, she came over and tried to do that with me—then realized I could not stand up and hold her hands the way I always had.
My heart shattered.
It was one of the most poignant emotional experiences of early motherhood for me. I was grieving the temporary loss of being her primary person in the way I had been before. I could not pick her up, follow her around, or move through our days together in the way we were both accustomed to.
To get myself through it, I made a promise: once I could walk again, I was taking her on the Brightline to Disney World.
Nearly everyone thought this was an objectively terrible idea.
She was eighteen months old, strong-willed, and not exactly known for going peacefully with the flow. Disney World in the Florida heat was ambitious even before factoring in a recent leg injury, train travel, a hotel stay, and the sheer volume of belongings required to take a toddler anywhere.
But I was determined.
After months in a wheelchair followed by extensive physical therapy, my best friend and I boarded the Brightline with my daughter before either of us had enough time to reconsider what we were doing.
The trip required an enormous amount of effort. We lugged everything onto the train, managed an eighteen-month-old in ninety-seven-degree heat, stayed overnight in a hotel, and navigated Disney World while I was still rebuilding my strength.
And it remains one of the best memories of my life.
While I was injured, I had played “It’s a Small World” for my daughter over and over so she would recognize it when we finally got there. Watching her face light up as the ride began made every complicated, sweaty, slightly unhinged part of the plan completely worth it.
That trip helped me recognize that creating memories with the people I love is not simply something I happen to be good at. It is one of the ways I express love.
If your own “thing” did not immediately pop into your mind, think about what you loved as a child or what you naturally value in your life now. Maybe it is reading, cooking, being outdoors, making things, celebrating traditions, or creating a home where people feel welcome.
The point is not to turn your strength into another parenting assignment. It is to recognize the part of yourself you are already sharing with your child.
Of course, knowing your strength does not mean you will never feel guilty about the areas where you are less gifted.
I still feel a pang of guilt when I feed my daughter one of the remarkably uncreative dinners from our standard rotation.
Cooking and recipe creativity could not be lower on my list of natural abilities, which is particularly funny considering that my mother is a professional recipe developer and an incredible cook. Feeding us delicious, home-cooked meals was one of her things.
Sometimes I feel bad that this will not be the same experience my daughter has with me.
But when that thought appears, I try to redirect myself toward what I do bring to her life.
I put photos from our outings on a digital frame in our house. It has become a rotating, completely random reminder of the experiences we have shared.
So yes, my daughter may be eating Goodles mac and cheese again tonight.
But she also has a pretty incredible childhood.
And I can be proud of the time, thought, and energy I devote to the part of motherhood that feels most like me.
