31 Lessons from 31 Years of Motherhood (and Why They Made Me a Better Physician and Human Being)
Today is Mother's Day. I’ve been a mother for 31 years, longer than I’ve been a doctor.
And while medicine taught me how to heal bodies, motherhood taught me how to hold a life with both strength and tenderness.
My earliest memory of wanting to be a mother is vivid: I was seven or eight, squeezing the belly of a doll that cooed in response. That sound touched something deep in me, a knowing. A longing. A truth.
I became a mother at 23, barely out of college and just stepping into adulthood. My husband and I left the hospital with our newborn daughter in a car seat, looking at each other in disbelief: “Are they really letting us take this baby home?”
Three decades and two more children later, I look back in awe. Not just at how fast the years passed, but at how deeply they formed me.
Here are 31 lessons motherhood gave me. Each one helped shape the kind of mother, physician, and human I strive to be.
1. Love doesn’t divide—it multiplies.
I feared I’d never love another child as much as my first. Then I did. And again.
The heart only expands. It never runs out.
2. Children don’t need a perfect mother. They need a present one.
The power of presence outweighs the pressure of performance.
Being there matters more than doing it all right.
3. Motherhood reveals your wounds and gives you a chance to heal them.
My desire to raise my children differently forced me to face parts of my own story.
Breaking cycles starts with awareness and continues with compassion.
4. Medical school with three children is possible, but not without a village.
It wasn’t easy. But I didn’t do it alone.
Asking for help is how strength is sustained.
5. Living in a multigenerational household is both messy and miraculous.
We lived with my grandmother, my in-laws, and witnessed both birth and death under one roof.
It taught my children that caregiving and grieving are part of the same sacred continuum.
6. You don’t have to do everything the way others do, and that includes breastfeeding.
There are many ways to nurture. We each make the best choices we can with the season we're in.
There is no one way to be a good mother.
7. Deploying to the Middle East while your child cries on the phone will break your heart—and strengthen it.
My daughter sobbed through the line while I sat in uniform thousands of miles away.
Love can stretch across oceans. But it still aches.
8. You will fail. Often. That doesn’t make you a failure.
There were nights I cried myself to sleep feeling like I’d let everyone down.
But every morning was a new chance to show up.
9. Children are your greatest teachers in patience, humility, and humor.
They reflect back your flaws and your gifts.
And sometimes they do it in the same sentence.
10. Silence can speak volumes.
Especially during teenage years when words feel scarce.
Presence without pressure creates safety.
11. Motherhood is not just biological. It’s spiritual.
It’s the sacred act of creating space for another’s becoming.
And sometimes, that becomes your own transformation too.
12. The work of healing begins at home.
Before I healed patients, I had to learn how to create peace at my dinner table.
Health isn't just physical—it’s relational.
13. Sleep is sacred. Protect it for your kids and yourself.
Exhaustion doesn’t earn you extra credit in motherhood or medicine.
Rest is not indulgence. It’s necessity.
14. You are allowed to grow alongside your children.
We think we’re raising them, but they’re growing us, too.
Every season requires a new version of you.
15. Emotional regulation is a superpower. Especially when your toddler melts down in Target.
What we model becomes their mirror.
They learn calm not because we avoid chaos, but because we walk through it with them.
16. Forgiveness is a daily decision. Especially toward yourself.
There is no such thing as getting it right all the time.
Grace is oxygen in parenting.
17. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of wisdom.
I didn’t earn medals for doing it alone, I found life in doing it with others.
Motherhood is not a solo mission.
18. Your children will watch how you treat yourself more than how you treat them.
I learned that my self-talk often became their inner voice.
They learn self-compassion by watching yours in action.
19. Boundaries are love. Especially when they scream otherwise.
Saying no doesn’t mean you don’t care, it means you care deeply.
Limits build safety, not rejection.
20. Nothing prepares you for the quiet after they leave the nest.
The stillness can be both a relief and an ache.
You grieve who they were, and marvel at who they’ve become.
21. Becoming a parent to adult children is like learning a new language. No one teaches you how to speak it.
The rules change, and so does your role.
Listening becomes the new loving.
22. Your role changes, but your presence still matters.
Even when they don’t ask for it, they feel it.
Being in their corner counts—even from afar.
23. When your child becomes a doctor, too. It’s the sweetest full-circle moment.
Watching her wear the same white coat I once did felt like sacred poetry.
Legacy is not what we leave, it’s what we live into.
24. The work of motherhood doesn’t end when they turn 18. It deepens.
You don’t stop mothering. You just mother differently.
It’s less hands-on, more heart-open.
25. You will see yourself in your children and sometimes it will ache.
Their struggles often mirror your own.
It invites us to meet our younger self with more compassion.
26. Let them make mistakes. Let them come home.
Their growth includes stumbles. Your arms must always remain open.
Love doesn’t shame, it shelters.
27. Grief and pride can live in the same breath.
You miss the child they were while celebrating the adult they’ve become.
Both are true. And both are beautiful.
28. A good meal, shared slowly, heals more than we know.
The dinner table holds more wisdom than a thousand lectures.
Breaking bread together can mend what’s been broken.
29. There is no manual. But there is wisdom. And it’s passed down in stories, not rules.
Telling the truth about our imperfect journey is the most sacred inheritance.
Stories stitch generations together.
30. You can be a physician and a mother. But never forget which came first.
Patients changed my schedule. My children changed my soul.
One is my calling. The other, my becoming.
31. The most sacred title I’ve ever earned isn’t “Doctor.” It’s “Mom.”
No degree compares to the privilege of being their mother.
And every year, I’m still learning how.
If you had asked me 31 years ago what I thought I’d learn from being a mother, I might have said patience or responsibility or how to pack a diaper bag with one hand.
But what I’ve really learned—what I continue to learn—is how to live with an open heart.
Motherhood didn’t just teach me how to love my children.
It taught me how to love myself.
How to hold space for contradictions.
How to grieve and celebrate at the same time.
How to see the sacred in the ordinary.
Whether you are a mother, have a mother, mother others in your own quiet way, or carry both joy and ache in your heart today—I see you.
And to every woman who has nurtured, healed, held, guided, or grown alongside someone else:
Happy Mother’s Day to all who celebrate.
You are shaping the world in ways both visible and invisible.
And every small act of love matters more than you know.
I don’t have children, but I recognize good mothering when I hear about it or see it. And it makes my heart sing to see what attunement and the nurturing of secure attachment looks like in actions. Thank you for sharing these beautiful words.
My brilliant, professional friend Shelly said ALMOST the same thing you did when leaving the hospital with her firstborn (and only) child. Instead, she said, "They should have called security."