Being a mom is not for the faint or weary. It’s a 24-hour job that requires you to juggle an unimaginable number of tasks in any given day. It’s overwhelming, gratifying, exhausting and one of the greatest blessings (sometimes in disguise).
Motherhood, simply put, is “the state of birthing or acquiring a tiny human and then trying not to fuck it up for 20-plus years,” SheKnows parenting editor Amelia Edelman says. Truer words have likely never been spoken.
But often, to make it through those 20 years, mamas need to lean in to one another for encouragement, advice and support. After all, it really does take a village. And wine. A lot of wine.
For this Mother’s Day, we asked celebrities to share one particular lesson they learned early in motherhood that stuck with them through the years. Here’s what they said.
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“Honestly, one of the best things that I’m learning but still not great at is to be kind to yourself and to give yourself a little leeway here and there. I think it’s really easy for us to get hard on ourselves or down [on ourselves] on top of everything else or [just focus on] all the things we’re not good at or our failures of the week. I think that having a kid, especially in these last three years, [that’s what I’ve learned.] It’s important to remember to have a little more kindness and compassion for yourself. It’s easy to forgive everybody else, and it’s easy to do all these things for everybody else, and you really forget to be kind to yourself.”
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Rosamund Pike
“That your children teach you as much as you teach them. No doubt about it. I feel that my creativity and everything peaked and was thrown wide open by having children.”
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Julie Bowen
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“It’s a trope, but for a reason: The days are long, and the years are short. It feels like forever when it’s in the middle of the night and the baby’s crying, but it’s over so fast. And trying to balance those two things — like patience and being in the moment when having a lot to do — it’s really hard. But I say it to myself all the time: The days are long, but the years are short.”
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Drew Barrymore
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“To live your life as the example you want to be for your kids. I think you can talk and teach until you’re blue in the face. But I feel like they watch what you do, so whatever lesson you want to bestow on your children, you have to live that yourself.”
Chrissy Teigen
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“Being a mom now, going onto my second baby, you realize that you want the best for them. You don’t want to compromise.”
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Ellen Pompeo
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It is “never a mistake, always a lesson.”
Mayim Bialik
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“Motherhood is really an extension of your childhood in many ways. If there were things you didn’t get or things that didn’t get resolved, motherhood will force you to look at them and either resolve them once and for all or continue them and pass them on. I’ve really found that, being a parent, those children are a mirror.”
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