When you don’t feel smart enough, remember that you have special gifts and talents that only you can share in your own unique way.

When you don’t feel strong enough, remember that when you were 1 years old you walked a mile from downtown Carmel back to our house.

When you don’t feel brave enough, remember how you’d go to the doctor as a child for your immunization shots and wouldn’t cry.

When you don’t feel beautiful enough, remember that it’s really not your outward appearance that makes you shine, but the beauty and love in your heart that makes you attractive.

We grow up and become women and we forget what we knew as a child.  We are smart and intelligent even if we don’t know all the answers and can’t solve all our problems alone. We are strong even when our arms seem to fail us, our hearts seem overburdened, and we think we can’t possible walk one more step.  We are brave even when our hearts are pounding and it seems nearly impossible to do that difficult, scary thing.  We are beautiful even with our wild, sometimes out of place hair.  Happy Mother’s Day to the mothers who are and the mothers who yearn to be.