I have a short message today for every mom who has worked so hard to raise her children, who has sacrificed to make home a safe place with unconditional acceptance and love, who has struggled to hold her family together, sometimes with an unsupportive spouse, who stays up late worrying about her family and rises early to pray for them, who sometimes suffers in silence but keeps going, who has worked and labored harder than anyone knows to make changes changes in her own life, to break those old patterns, but who never feels like she's done enough or is good enough. I want you to let this sink in and repeat it again and again. I'm proud of you. I'm really proud of you. I'm proud of you. You don't hear that enough, moms, either from others or yourself. So many of you have suffered trauma as a kid or in your marriage. You ended up with a controlling man or a narcissist. Or you grew up in a controlling religious environment in which your voice was never heard. So you never learned to speak up, or you doubted and second-guessed your instincts, and you got hurt badly. Yet here you are, working through your own hurts and trauma and struggles, selflessly doing everything you can to make sure your kids don't experience the same pain you did.

Many of you are doing this by yourself without any support at all. And no one knows how hard this is, how lonely that road can be. No one knows what it's like to feel so vulnerable, emotionally, sometimes financially, and to even feel helpless to do the one thing you want to do better than anything else you've ever done. Be a mom. But then you feel like you're not doing enough or like others are judging and second-guessing you. Or maybe you are married to someone who somehow poured on the charm or was engaged during the thrill of the hunt, but now he doesn't even seem to know how to communicate or listen or even touch you without expectations. With someone who won't listen to a single podcast or try to change his parenting style, even though you've asked him nicely countless times. Here you are, holding your family together, all alone at times, sometimes feeling numb, working through your own past childhood hurts while trying to heal everyone around you. Well, I'm proud of you because you are like my own mom. My mom was a simple girl who fell for a charming man who turned out to be deceitful, controlling, and abusive.

Not to mention that my dad was just plain scary. When she couldn't take it anymore, she somehow got her four boys out of the home when her husband, my dad, was on a business trip so we could be safe. That was in 1978. Women didn't do that back then, but my mom did, because my mom was the most loving, encouraging person you've ever met. But down inside, she was a badass because she fought like you do, sacrificing herself for the boys she loved more than anything in life. I believe that all the stress that my dad caused her to contract, she had MS. She bore that in her body, and it was a disease gradually took away body part after body part. But she never complained, she never stopped loving, she never stopped fighting. She loved her boys to her last breath. See, we as men like to think we're tough. We develop hero stories around it. But we've never carried or given birth to a baby. We rarely bear the emotional burden of an entire family. Now look, I was going to add a few tips to lighten the load from your parenting journey as a mom.

But I think I'm going to stop here because I think it's important for this to sink in. I do want you to know that I'm proud of you, that you are seen, that you are appreciated, and that you're a great mom. And don't you ever doubt that or forget that. Happy Mother's Day, mom. Love you all.