Hey kids, when you see me cry-I need you to know this.

I may be your mom and you may think I’m the best and strongest and most reliable person in the world, but kids, I’m also human. I’m real and have emotions and you can be the best kids in the whole entire world and I still will have days where I feel like the worst mom in the world. And there can be times where you drive me crazy too.

But I always love you.

Even on those days when you see me cry.

Or hide in the closest because I don’t want you to see me crying. Those are the days when you’ll knock on the bathroom door and ask if I’m okay and I’ll try to stuff it in and tell you I’m fine. Then when you see me I’ll have that splotchy face and I know you might wonder why.

Sometimes it is the stress of motherhood. I don’t know why I didn’t expect dishes and homework and fighting and laundry and sickness and just being tired to sometimes get the best of me. But there are some days when it just feels like so much and in those moments the simplest thing could push me to tears. I’m sorry about those days, I really am. I want to be your rock all the time.

But I also think that somehow seeing me being real, being a mom who tries her very very best gives you the breath of permission to sink into your own humanness.

You see, we were never created or designed to be perfect. I know that sometimes you look at the world or instagram and it seems like a scroll of people who have it together or are cleverly funny or who never have a moment that makes the tears well in their eyes. You see, my sweet kids, you are just seeing a part, a part that is behind filters and a dozen pictures and thought out words. You see, behind everyone in this entire world is a part of us that feels.

We feel the joys and sadness and ups and downs and good days and bad days and days where we just have had enough.

It’s not my job to be perfect, it’s my job to model to you how to be a good human and how to make a difference.

So because of that, sometimes I do cry.

You know, sometimes I cry when you astound me. Those moments are the most beautiful profound moments of motherhood. Like seeing you with a reading score that hits average when a year ago I wasn’t sure you’d ever read. My word, that makes me teary right now. Or when you love each other so deeply or are so thoughtful to others. Those are the moments of life – the glitter and sunshine moments that draw us through the bad days. They remind us of the good, the potential. Of love.

It’s okay to cry at those. That means you feel deeply.

It means you love.

And sometimes I cry because life is hard. Life is hard, my sweet kids. There is nothing I can do to sugarcoat that reality away from you. And, in fact, I would be doing you a disservice if you only believed it was a the glitter. Life will have moments that will leave you feeling like you are standing in the middle of a thunderstorm and the rain is pelting your face and you are so very alone. But you will never be alone, because I will be there, next to you – in heart and spirit and lesson. That is my role, my job, my gift. But listen, there are also moments of pain. I wish beyond wish I could shield you from them. Bu you know. They are the breaks of divorce or death or sickness or lost dreams. Don’t stuff the pain inside, but allow yourself to feel. To be real.

You see when we hide our hearts and our emotions we keep ourselves stuck.

So feel.

Your heart wasn’t designed to be without emotion. Emotion is what makes life a gift.

It is what makes those moment of triumph stories you will tell your grandchildren. It is what makes the places where you are low and claw yourself out the wisdom you will share.

I am strong. You know that. But I am also strong enough to know that in moments of weakness that real strength doesn’t come in having it all together, it comes in human moments of tears and real. And in those moments of letting go you create within you the most profound thing – space for hope.

I love you with all of me.

When I cry, it’s because I am real. I want you to live that way too. Knowing that you are strong but that you can feel. Knowing that you can try but if you stumble it is not the end. Because you will stand up, you will brush off those tears, you will push your hair out of your face, and you will try again.

Because that is what you have seen in me.

~mom.

original words by Rachel Marie Martin