Jun 30, 2026 · 28 min · 9 segments
Every Mother's Day, I see the same message on cards: Thank you for giving up everything for us. But the cards my own kids write tell a different story. In this episode, I'm talking about what we're…
But I want to tell you first a little bit of a story about something that happens to me every year in May.
Every year around the first week of May, the second week of May, I end up in a store and I'm in the card aisle.
And I do something that's probably not so great for my blood pressure, but has become like an important tradition, which is I read all of the cards.
I walk down that Mother's Day card aisle and I read, not exaggerating, like literally almost every single card because I'm on a mission.
I started to notice this pattern a number of years ago about the way we write Mother's Day cards.
Different fonts, different shades of pastel, but the same message lives underneath all of these cards.
Thank you for putting yourself last every single time and not complaining about it.
And there's always some version with a tired-looking woman on the front, smiling anyway, like a cartoon version.
The smile is somehow proof that it didn't kill her, even if it took every other thing that she had.
Some of them are kind of poetic and some of them are kind of funny, but they really are in the same sentiment of like, thank you for sacrificing it all on our behalf.
And I started wondering early in motherhood, why do we do this? Why is this the narrative that we have that we are not just acknowledging, but like celebrating women for? And I started to wonder like, was I maybe being a little oversensitive, which maybe I was.
But one year I was looking at these in the aisle thinking, these are like not thank you cards.
Mother's Day cards are sort of like thank you cards, right? They're telling us how grateful they are.
And then we're wrapping it up in glitter and charging $6.95 for it in the card aisle.
And I started thinking about, God, I hope I never get one of these cards.
How would my children pick up one of these cards and with any level of sincerity, give it to me? Because that's not my goal.
My goal has never been... to just completely lose myself in the process of parenting.
But I want to tell you first a little bit of a story about something that happens to me every year in May.
Every year around the first week of May, the second week of May, I end up in a store and I'm in the card aisle.
And I do something that's probably not so great for my blood pressure, but has become like an important tradition, which is I read all of the cards.
I walk down that Mother's Day card aisle and I read, not exaggerating, like literally almost every single card because I'm on a mission.
I started to notice this pattern a number of years ago about the way we write Mother's Day cards.
Different fonts, different shades of pastel, but the same message lives underneath all of these cards.
Thank you for putting yourself last every single time and not complaining about it.
And there's always some version with a tired-looking woman on the front, smiling anyway, like a cartoon version.
The smile is somehow proof that it didn't kill her, even if it took every other thing that she had.
Some of them are kind of poetic and some of them are kind of funny, but they really are in the same sentiment of like, thank you for sacrificing it all on our behalf.
And I started wondering early in motherhood, why do we do this? Why is this the narrative that we have that we are not just acknowledging, but like celebrating women for? And I started to wonder like, was I maybe being a little oversensitive, which maybe I was.
But one year I was looking at these in the aisle thinking, these are like not thank you cards.
Mother's Day cards are sort of like thank you cards, right? They're telling us how grateful they are.
And then we're wrapping it up in glitter and charging $6.95 for it in the card aisle.
And I started thinking about, God, I hope I never get one of these cards.
How would my children pick up one of these cards and with any level of sincerity, give it to me? Because that's not my goal.
My goal has never been... to just completely lose myself in the process of parenting.
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