The Perfect Mom Doesn’t Exist

When I found out I was pregnant for the first time, I lay awake that night wondering, Do I know how to be a good mom? And then three weeks later, I lay on a cold, sterile table as my doctor searched in vain for the heartbeat of a baby who had briefly been there and was now gone. Tears rolled down my face as I walked out of his office, grieving for a baby who was suddenly a memory instead of a reality. I was devastated and heartbroken, but what I didn’t know that day was that I had just arrived at the threshold of what it means to be a good mom. Good moms love so deeply that our hearts are never the same.

A little less than two years later, I held Caroline in my arms. Miraculously, the hospital staff just let us load her into our car, checking only to make sure we had a properly installed car seat, and we took her home. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had skimmed several parenting books. Surely they would help me be a good mom as I figured out feeding schedules and how to cut teeny-tiny, razor-sharp baby fingernails, and—oh my gosh—what do I do with this umbilical cord stump?

Now that I’m almost sixteen years down this motherhood road, I’ve realized that being a good mom doesn’t mean being a perfect mom. A perfect mom puts sand in a plastic box so her toddler can have a meaningful sensory experience and doesn’t care about the mess. A perfect mom plays board games for hours on end, makes hot chocolate with organic milk and candy cane stir sticks, and serves chicken nuggets made only from chickens who were allowed to roam free in sunlit barns. She never loses her patience, never checks her text messages while her child is around, and is the president of the parent/teacher association while managing a Fortune 500 company, after which she returns home at night to prepare a delicious, nutritious meal for her family.

In short, the perfect mom doesn’t exist. And if she did, we would all hate her.

The perfect mom is a unicorn, mythical at best. But a good mom is the velveteen rabbit, a little worn from use. And while I’m not confident in a lot of areas of my life, I’m confident I’m a good mom, because what ultimately makes a good mom is showing up. I’ve held back hair as she’s thrown up over the toilet (and, I regret to say, all over me). I’ve wiped her bottom and her feverish forehead. I’ve stayed in the school parking lot long after she’s walked through the school doors, praying and hoping that today would be a better day. I’ve sat in the rain, the cold, and the heat that rivals the surface of the sun to watch her play soccer. I’ve cried when she’s overwhelmed by joy, and I’ve cried when disappointments have her down. I’ve yelled too much, lost my patience, and seen how many mornings I can get by with Frosted Flakes for breakfast. I’ve driven more carpools than I can count, attended Taylor Swift concerts, and spent many weekend nights with my house full of tween girls with high-pitched squeals who think cleaning up after themselves means putting half-empty soda cans under the bed. I’ve looked at my phone too often, set the clock ahead an hour so I could tell her it was time for bed, and pretended to have an upset stomach just so I could have a few minutes alone in the bathroom.

But I have no doubt she knows she is deeply loved, because I have faithfully shown up for the job for the last sixteen years. It hasn’t been perfect, it hasn’t always been pretty, and nobody is likely to turn our story into an award-winning movie. Being a good mom doesn’t really make the highlight reel because there is very little glamour in packing another peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. It’s just about being faithful with what has been entrusted to you for such a short time that I could sob thinking about it. It’s loving hard, laughing loud, crying when you are at your breaking point, hugging them tight, and having a good bakery on speed dial, because there isn’t any way you are going to be able to make a birthday cake like the ones the mythical perfect moms post on Pinterest. It’s messy, loud, beautiful, mundane, exhilarating, and gut-wrenching all at the same time.

I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

This post is excerpted from On the Bright Side (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2020).

Melanie Shankle writes regularly at The Big Mama blog and is the New York Times bestselling author of seven previous books, including Nobody’s Cuter than You and It’s All About the Small Things. Melanie is a graduate of Texas A&M and loves writing, shopping at Target, checking to see what’s on sale at Anthropologie, and trying to find the lighter side in every situation. Most of all, she loves being the mother of Caroline, the wife of Perry, and the official herder of two wild dogs named Piper and Mabel.

Photograph © Artem Maltsev, used with permission