The top 5 lessons we learned from our awesome moms!
It’s Mother’s Day this week! We are excited to celebrate the phenomenal women who gave us life. They’re pretty freaking amazing.
And aren’t all women? #queens But for real, we hope you’re taking a moment to honor all the moms in your life, including yourself if it applies.
***Also, quick but important sidenote, if you don’t have a mom, or you’re grieving your mom, or you’re trying to become a mom, or it’s complicated… our hearts are with you. This topic can be a minefield. So please know that we love you. We stand with you.
Back to our regularly scheduled programming… our original goal for today’s episode & we teased it on last week’s, was to interview our moms. But dang it, if they aren’t productive, popular women with full lives that made scheduling suuupes tricky.
So instead, we’re going to share with you the top 10 lessons our powerful mommas taught us.
Francesca’s Top 5
1. Food is love. I come from a long line of crazy beautiful wonderful Italian women who have spent countless hours cooking. Laboring love.
They’ve started traditions in the kitchen - every year we have a celebratory “cookie day” around the holidays where we bake dozens upon dozens of cookies and share them with our neighbors and friends. For a few years, we even held a “pasta day” where my grandma taught us all how to make homemade pasta and of course we had to pair it with a bunch of different homemade sauces. At family parties, we always gather in the kitchen. It’s the heart of our home.
Growing up, we’d eat every meal together as a family sitting around our kitchen table. Even if it was at 10:00 at night after ballet lessons, soccer practice, CCD and after school activities. We’d eat together.
It wasn’t until I started cooking during this quarantine that I truly felt like “one of them.” One of the all-stars in my family that gets to nourish our souls. And it wasn’t until I sat around a table where my family ate a meal that I prepared that I truly understood why. Why did they painstakingly work for hours on a meal that would be devoured in mere minutes. Why did they work so hard at family parties to have dozens of leftovers when we absolutely could’ve catered. Why did they fill our house with the smell of cookies that we’d be confronted with after running off the school bus. Food is love.
2. We get to choose to be happy.
For years - albeit the begrudging years from middle school to high school - my mom would say the same phrase seemingly every day. “Every morning, we put our feet on the floor and we get to choose to be happy.” When I was younger, this mantra of my mom’s became something I’d roll my eyes at. But as I get older, I know she’s right. We get to choose to be happy the same way we get to choose what we want for lunch and the same way we get to choose what movie we want to watch tonight. Yes, there are so many things in our lives that we can’t control. International pandemics, for one - but through her repetitive mantra, she showed me that not only do we get to choose to be happy, but we get to choose our reactions to life’s incontrol.
3. Rub some dirt in it
We have this joke in my family that My mom is NOT a coddler. She’s the rub some dirt in it, deal with it and move on kinda mom. In any sport we played, she always told us she was our biggest cheerleader and worst critic and I love that. Except when she was critiquing us...but most of the time, I loved it. Because she’d be the mom that was screaming from the bleachers sitting through our soccer games in the pouring rain. And when we got knocked down, she’d pause - make sure we were okay - then yell at us to get back up again. I want to be just like her.
4. Worry is a wasted emotion
I feel like these lessons are just all the mantras I hear my mom say over and over again. Which in and of itself is pretty dang amazing. I am most definitely an anxious person and whenever I start to get anxious or worried, I always think of my mom. Because she’s right. There’s no use worrying about things you can’t change. And if you can change it - do it, put some action behind it and quit your worrying.
5. About love: Invest in your relationship, communicate, always and be a united front.
My parents met when they were in high school and if you saw them now, you’d see that they’re still head over heels in love with each other. Before the quarantine - they’d still go on date nights, hold hands in the supermarket and they STILL celebrate their dating anniversary each year. Once we got a bit older, they’d plan trips without kids because they made sure they were still making time for each other.
I remember when we were little, my siblings and I would ask my mom something and she’d go, “go ask your father,” and then we’d go to my dad and he’d say, “what’d your mother tell you?” When it came to making decisions about us, they always appeared as a united front against the kids. And as I get older and my siblings start thinking about kids - I really admire that trait in a parent. I’m under no pretense that they agreed on everything BUT I do really appreciate that they’d make a decision together.
My sister and I always talk about how hard it was for us to date growing up because we always looked up to our parents’ relationship. And how could we settle for anything less than that?
Audra’s Top 5
1. Being of service to others is the highest calling.
My mom cares deeply about people. Empathy isn’t a big enough word. We would joke that we couldn’t go anywhere with my mom without being stopped by someone who knew her, loved her & had to give her a hug. She would leave for work everyday overflowing with energy & passion, and come home haven given it all away. To this day, she does her part to make the world a better place. In short, she’s made an impact.
2. Pursuing your passion is always worthwhile.
So my mom took her two deep passions and created the most beautiful program. She’s loved mission work & musicals since she was a teenager. And once she was done having babies & we settled in the town we’d live in for the next 25 years… she created the Musical Mission Tour. One week every summer, 50 teens take a musical they’ve rehearsed for 6 weeks on the road, performing for non-profits & doing mission work along the way. It is a life-changing experience for every participant, chaperons included. So in whatever way you can pursue your passion - in dribs & drabs, as your side hustle, as your hobby… do it! Sara taught me that any passion pursuit will yield amazing blessings for you & for others!
3. Everyone’s invited.
Not only is this a great lesson for conflict resolution & grace (cuz who gets along with everyone?), but it’s how we wish the world worked. My mom never left anyone out. Everyone was invited, all the time. All genders, all orientations, all faiths, all backgrounds, all ages, all temperaments, all abilities, all needs, all everything. Sara never met an underdog she didn’t love. And this has taught me to love bigger & braver. The more voices in the choir, the prettier it sounds.
4. Girls can do anything.
I have a mom who mows the lawn, manages her household’s finances, and knows how to change a tire. I am forever grateful that when I went to my friends’ houses - I saw their moms doing things my mom didn’t and likewise, I saw their dads doing things my mom did do. All humans can do all the things. This lesson has helped me so much as a grown-up. Dividing up household chores & delegating tasks & assigning roles according to ability, not stereotype.
5. You are not the center of the universe.
My mom taught me so much toughness by handing me an open-minded, open-hearted faith that put God in the center of our universe. I was not the center of her world, nor should I make myself the center of mine. This simple truth radiates into so many happy lessons. It’s saved me from any pressure of perfectionism, because we are only human and it’s not all up to me. It saved me as a teeanger from crippling anxiety or greed, because there were others to think about. As a mom now myself, it’s saved from the trap/lie of 'Mom Guilt.' Because I saw my mom flourish because she had lots of loves. She loved & prioritized her family, but she had other things going on in her life. She loved her career, her hobbies, her friends. It showed me that balance is a myth, but harmony is possible. We can take our work seriously, whatever that may be, without taking ourselves seriously.
Here’s to you this week, moms! And to anyone who has ever learned a valuable lesson or passed on a valuable lesson. Cheers!
“My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.” Justice Ruth Bater Ginsburg
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