The Greatest Warrior of All Time

She should be wearing a cape.

She should have a light that shines bright with her emblem on it whenever she’s needed.

She should have awards lining her walls and shelves, showing how amazing she is, and how much she has been appreciated.

Instead, though, she has birthday and Mother’s Day cards going back 20 plus years from my siblings and me. She has arts and craft projects from all of us kids, ranging from popsicle-stick-ornaments, to the poem I wrote in 7th grade, to the song I wrote for her and framed, to the clay statue my brother made in college—she’s kept them. On her walls she has framed photos of our smiling faces, and our numbers are saved as her ‘favorites’ on her phone. When people ask her what her greatest achievements are, she always tells them that it’s us… always her kids.

Seven years ago, I became a single mother, and I felt utterly empty and lost. My daughter was only one, and I was alone. My mom instantly came to my rescue, as she always does. She didn’t just take me in, though, she showed me how to make a life for myself and my daughter. She helped me get a place which she shared with me half the week, helping me with my little girl, watching her so I could go work. As time wore on, the friendship we’d had since I was a child, blossomed into a stronger friendship, to the point that, even today, we consider each other our best friends.

Even before I became a single parent, my mom demonstrated what it was like to be a working mom that also kept her children close to her. Through most of my childhood, she worked 3 jobs, and yet she always chose jobs that she could bring us with her. They weren’t easy jobs either, often dirty, harder labor, with the most memorable being a newspaper delivery driver. I remember late nights that us kids would join her, while my dad did his own route and would take one of us with him, and the others going with her. We would curl up in a sleeping bag in the backseat while she drove, telling us stories and chatting with us, or singing with us as we went. At the end of the route, we would go out to Taco Bell—whoever finished first would get the tacos. These memories, of 1:00 am tacos with my mom and siblings, were some of the fondest I have of my childhood. The fact that my mom let us come with her, that she still made it fun even if it was just hanging out in a big old van with stacks of newspapers piled up beside us. She made every moment memorable.

So, as I started to heal from my divorce, transforming my former ideas about my future. I remembered back to the moments my mom managed to morph otherwise boring tasks into something fun. She was like the Mary Poppins of motherhood, always doing everything with a smile. I didn’t realize how hard that was until I tried to do it too… but where I thought my mom had just always been happy, never a care in the world, I started to discover how hard things had been for her too. She told me her stories, told me about the times that had made her question everything, but she kept going because of God and because of us. So, I held my head high, and started to try something new. My daughter and I started turning sweeping and dishes into a singing game. We took special time every night to read books together. The more time I spent trying to make things fun for her, the more I started to feel the life come back into me again.

My sister and I always agreed that my mom had made motherhood seems so easy and effortless. She was a mother of three, but the house was always clean, us kids were always fed, hair combed, clothing in order, yet she worked three jobs… and yet she managed to spend 30 minutes with each of us individually every night, either talking, singing, or reading. She was such an active parent, and now she’s an active grandma. Our kids adore her just as we did, and still do. We often compare her to Wonder Woman, because she does everything so well, and yet makes it always look so effortless. My sister is a mother of three, and she constantly says she doesn’t know how mom always did it so well with that always-there smile.

My mom has fought some of the greatest battles a woman can fight, and yet she has always come out of them standing tall, smiling through it all, even if her clothing was singed by the chaos and fire behind her. She has shown my sister I what being a strong woman really looks like. It’s not about being cold, or hard… it’s about doing everything with love, with passion, with forgiveness, and working as hard as you can. Because of her lessons, all my siblings and I are not only incredibly successful in our careers—always proven to be some of the hardest workers in our businesses—but are also successful people in our everyday lives. We were taught how to love by a woman who shared and showed love and forgiveness freely.

To me, my mom is a superhero… the greatest warrior I’ve ever known. Not because she has fought any wars across the seas, but because she fought the kinds of battles only a mother fights… and sometimes, those are some of the hardest there are.