A Mother in Motherless Time

There’s something sacred about raising a child in today’s world. There are many hearts walking around untouched, unheld, and unloved.

So many people have never truly been mothered — not emotionally, not spiritually, not soulfully.

As I raise my daughter, I realize that I’m not just teaching her how to be a good person. I’m teaching her how to see people. To say “good morning” because presence matters. To be kind when it’s easier to be distant. To love instead of judge, because judgment is often a mask for misunderstanding.

And in this process, God keeps revealing something beautiful to me: either I’m teaching my daughter a lesson He already taught me, or she is teaching me a lesson He wants me to learn. It’s not always about parenting her — sometimes it’s about letting God parent me through her.

Now when I talk to people, I don’t just hear words — I hear wounds. I can feel where someone’s mother didn’t hold them long enough, or where life moved too fast for healing to catch up. And instead of meeting people’s actions with anger, I’ve learned to meet them with tenderness. Because sometimes the person with the bad attitude, the cold demeanor, or the sharp tongue… they’re not evil. They’re exposed. Their grief is loud. Their trauma is leaking. Their actions are their way of saying, “I don’t know how to be okay.”

We don’t need more shame. We need more hugs. More pauses. More hard conversations that start with, “You don’t seem okay. Do you want to talk?” We need more love in rooms that have only ever known survival.

To get bad behaviors out of a child — or an adult — you have to work it out or pray it out. But you also have to love it out. You have to touch the sore spot with softness, not force. That’s what real mothering is — offering warmth to the places the world has frozen over.

I’ve made a decision: I will mother my daughter with compassion. But I will also mother this world with it, too. Whether I’m raising a child or reaching a stranger, I want my words, my tone, my presence to feel like home.

Because even in motherless times, love can still show up like a mother.

Feeling moved? Send this to someone who needs to read it today.