Hey there, Mama.

Happy Mother’s Day!

If you’re anything like me, you’re caught between wanting today to be a huge celebration of everything you are as a mom and wanting to forget it’s Mother’s Day because part of you just doesn’t feel like you’re worthy of being celebrated.

If there’s one thing I want you to know today it’s that you are worthy.

You may not feel like it, but it’s true.

The other day while I was getting the kids’ vitamins together, Joshua ran up behind me, threw his arms around my waist, and said “you’re my best mama!”

It was totally unprompted, completely unexpected, and exactly what I needed.

It had been a long, long day. Rain and sickness kept us cooped up inside. The toddler hadn’t really slept which meant neither had I. I’d been short on patience and long on irritation all day.

But that tiny little moment caused a shift in the evening. I saw us painting around the table that morning, the joy in their faces when I handed them balloons to toss around the living room, heard their voices as we sang along to Frozen for the 4th time that day.

I might have lost my patience a time or two, but that day hadn’t been as bad as those thoughts told me it had been. In fact, it had been a pretty okay day. I hadn’t been a terrible mom scarring her children with the tone of her voice.

I had done my best and the oldest of my children had seen it. Yours can see the best in you, too, and that’s what today is really about.

Sometimes it might feel like you’re not worthy of their love and affection, much less the world’s celebration, but those thoughts, the ones that would see you wallowing in a pit of grief and despair, they’re joy-thieves.

They’re the kinds of thoughts that tell you if the big, grand moments of motherhood can’t be perfect then neither can the little ones. The thoughts that say if you lose your patience once in a day, the 35 times you kept your cool don’t count. That the harsh words you spoke are the only words you spoke all day.

They’re the kinds of thoughts that lie.

You are worthy of the love of those little ones entrusted to your care. You are worthy of the title of “Best Mom.”

Know why?

Because you’re doing your best, and your best isn’t the same as someone else’s. It’s yours and so are your children and that’s what matters most.

And that makes you the best mom ever.

Postpartum Progress, the world’s most widely-read blog on all things related to emotional health around pregnancy & childbirth, is a service of Postpartum Progress Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit devoted to raising awareness of postpartum depression and similar illnesses. Please consider making a donation today, Mother’s Day, so we can continue and expand our work supporting maternal mental health. Thank you!