Last Mother’s Day, I would have described motherhood very differently.

I would have talked mostly about the joy of becoming a mother, the dreams I had for what life with my daughter would look like, the connection I imagined we would always have, and the comfort of believing everything would somehow be okay.

Even through diagnoses, surgeries, and challenges over the years, I still held onto that picture in my mind.

But this past year changed motherhood for me more than any year before it.

Watching My Daughter struggle the way she has forced me to grieve parts of motherhood I never expected to grieve. Not my love for her, never that, but the expectations I carried for what motherhood would feel like, what it would look like, and who we would both become.

This Mother’s Day feels bittersweet because I finally understand that motherhood is never stagnant. It is constantly changing, constantly asking us to grow, bend, let go, and love deeper than we thought possible.

At its core, motherhood is still the same: being entrusted with someone to love, protect, cherish, and hold close. That part never changes.

But how we mother changes over time. The joys change. The fears change. The sacrifices change. The weight changes.

When your child has walked through trauma, anguish, or darkness, motherhood begins to touch every part of your life in ways people cannot fully understand unless they’ve lived it too.

Sometimes I think maybe it would have been easier if I had never created expectations for motherhood at all. Maybe then there would have been less grief in comparing what I imagined to what reality became.

But the truth is, reality gave me something far deeper than the version I once pictured.

Is it harder? Absolutely.

Is it more exhausting? Without question.

But I love my daughter completely and unconditionally, and that part has never wavered for a single moment.

Motherhood may not look the way I once imagined , but it is still one of the greatest gifts of my life.