Five Ways to Feel Confident about Being a Mom

Being a mom is the most difficult and most rewarding job in the world. Even the best mother sometimes wonders if she’s really influencing her children and hopes her hard work is appreciated. Chicken Soup for the Soul: For Mom, with Love reassures mothers with 101 stories of love and gratitude. Here are five tips and sage observations that will give moms some great ideas and show them they are indeed making a difference.

1. Your parenting teaches your children how to parent, too. Victoria LaFave was crushed when she didn’t make the high school cheerleading team. At home, she told her mother all about the painful details. “My mom always seemed to say just the right words,” Victoria shares. “Even though she had five other people’s problems to attend to, Mom made me feel like my problem was her only concern.” The advice her mother gave her then has stayed with Victoria: “Vicki, keep your chin up. That way, you can always see what’s coming next.” Now a mother herself, Victoria practices those parenting lessons she learned from her mom. “I have used her gift in helping my own two children through their most troubling times,” she writes. “Whenever I hug and encourage my kids with their grandmother’s words, it always helps to dry their tears.”

2. Your kids will eventually understand how awesome you are! When a snowstorm canceled school one Friday, Susan Blakeney and her brother had a grand time watching cartoons, eating cereal and playing inside. “Snow blocked every window and door,” Susan writes. Her dad had gone into town earlier that day, and couldn’t get back home until Sunday evening! But Susan hadn’t worried. Her mom had everything under control. It wasn’t until years later that Susan realized just how much pressure her mom had been under, worrying about having enough food, oil in the tank, and the power staying on. “During that storm, and for decades after,” Susan shares, “Mom preserved the innocence of the experience for me like a true superhero.”

3. You can create traditions that stay with your children for life. Every morning, Ronda Armstrong’s mother woke early to read her Bible. As a young girl, Ronda would climb into bed with her mother and the two would read together each day. “The early morning quiet time I shared with Mom throughout my childhood gave me a significant lifelong routine,” Ronda shares. “Reading together, interacting with Mom, and observing her daily life taught me about faith.” She kept up that routine into her college and career years, and added writing reflections to her own quiet time. “By sharing her routine and acting as a model, she gave me the foundation to nurture my faith through the joys and jolts of life,” Ronda says. “Thanks to her, I keep it growing strong every morning.”

4. Share the perspective you’ve gained with your children. Military wife Kim Stokely dreaded her young family’s first move. “The closer the time approached for us to leave the life we’d made together in Virginia, the more depressed I grew,” Kim shares. She called her mother-in-law one night because she’d moved frequently with her husband’s corporate job. “I figured if anyone could understand my anxiety, she could,” Kim says. Instead she was surprised by her mother-in-law’s enthusiastic reaction to Kim’s sadness. ‘“I always said, “If I don’t cry when I move away, I wasted my time.” I don’t know about you, but life’s too short to waste any of it, don’t you think?’” she told Kim. ‘“Think of each move as a new adventure.’” And Kim did. “Her motto stuck with me through my twenty years as a military wife,” she says. “Every move is an opportunity, a chance to see new things and make new friends. And even though I cried as I left each home, I celebrated the fact that I hadn’t wasted my time.”

5. Your unconditional love is the most important gift you offer. Despite their strong bond, Angel Therese Dionne feared telling her mom she was gay. “I had always questioned whether a parent’s love truly is unconditional,” Angel writes, “and at the time I was harboring a secret that I felt could be the end of our relationship.” She had no plans to come out to her Catholic mother. But during her first year of college, Angel and her girlfriend were “out-ed” and Angel felt compelled to tell her mother. “I waited for the outrage and disappointment that I expected,” Angel shares. Her mother’s response? ‘“I think you should be an actress; you’re so dramatic. It isn’t that big a deal. I love you and nothing can change that.’” Angel felt relieved. “Suddenly, years of secrecy, years of feeling as though I were an abomination, an abnormality, evaporated,” she says. “The road to self-acceptance continues to be rough, however I no longer doubt that a mother’s love for her child is unconditional.”