Do You Think They Had Mothers?

A Gift for Mom! 🤍

It’s December. I want to sit on the couch next to my Christmas tree drinking hot cocoa and think about how much fun we’ll have Christmas morning. I want to look outside at all the lights and decorations and feel the joy of the season. But how do I do it when there’s so much uncertainty and sadness in the world?

I think about sending my boys to college one day and I wonder, “Will they be safe? Will they have to worry that someone will come into one of their classrooms and start shooting?” I just don’t know. It could happen.

I don’t want to let my boys go anywhere, but I know I have to let them live, even though there are monsters out there who want to kill them. My boys, who have never hurt another human being in their lives, are hated simply because they are Americans.

When I was a young girl, I wasn’t concerned with these things. I worried about tornados or maybe my house catching on fire when we had “Fire Prevention Week” at school, but I never had to worry about a world full of strangers who despised me just because I was born in America.

And now my youngest son comes home from school every so often and asks me if ISIS is going to come to Michigan and kill us all.

I’ve always been the type of person who tried not to let anyone intimidate me. I went to New York City a month after 9/11. I wasn’t going to let terrorists keep me from living my life. But now I’m a mother, and I’ve become afraid to let my boys go.

I took them to see a movie the other night, and I was scanning the theatre the moment we sat down. I was looking for every exit sign and planning our escape, just in case some maniac in full gear, loaded with guns and ammo, came in shooting.

A few weeks ago, when my husband took my oldest son to a football game, I worried. I had to talk myself down, saying there would be no way my husband would ever let anything happen to my boy. I told myself I was being ridiculous and that they would both have a great time and be just fine.

I’m not totally paralyzed with fear yet. I still send them to school. I still walked into that theatre, bought them popcorn, and watched the movie. But as time goes on, and as we are continually attacked, my fear grows.

I want to stand up and tell the world that I’m not afraid, but I can only pretend. Because now that I have two sons whom I’ve sworn to love and protect, I am afraid, and I hate to admit it. I hate that the killers are winning. They are scaring me, and I’m losing the brave, fearless woman I once was.

These terrorists and murderers must have been young once. They were babies at one time. They had mothers. I wonder now, if their mothers see them and know what they do, how those mothers must feel. What shame it must be to know that your babies are killing other innocent babies and then celebrating it for all the world to see.

Or maybe these savages never had mothers, or at least not the kind of mothers who raised them with love and protection. Something had to have been missing somewhere along the way to have them grow up with no hearts.

I don’t have much of a choice. I’m going to let my kids live, let them go to the movies and football games, and to the mall because they need to live their lives. I know it’s better for them to experience all they can while they are still young. Although locking them in our house might keep them safer, that’s no real life for them at all.

But as I watch them walk out the door, I will still worry. I will still pray. I will still plan our escape. I will always be watching. And if the time ever comes when we face the most frightening situation, I’m not going down without a fight, no matter how scared I might be.

Maybe when the monsters were babies, they didn’t have mothers who fought for them. Maybe they had to survive on their own. I’m going to choose to believe they never had mothers because if they did, and their mothers were like me, that’s just the most scary thing of all.

So God Made a Grandmother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Order Now!

Motherhood

Tammi Landry-Gilder

Tammi is an author, wife, mother and blogger who lives in West Bloomfield, Michigan, with her husband, two sons, three dogs, and too many fish in a tank to count.

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

In: Grief

Woman with mother smiling in older photo

Recently, whenever I look in the mirror, I see a strong resemblance to my mother. People always said I looked like her, but I never really saw it until now. I think it may be because you always think of your parents as being older than you are. At the age of 61, I am now only two years away from the age my mother was when she died. The only good thing about dying young is that everyone will remember you that way. I have only known my mom as the vibrant, personable, and active woman she was. Well,...

Keep Reading

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood

Editor’s note: This post discusses child loss Child loss changes Mother’s Day. My 19-month-old, Julia, died suddenly on Mother’s Day in 2024. Three months later, her autopsy revealed she had B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (B-ALL, also known as SUDNIC). Julia died a week after we did an embryo transfer at an IVF clinic in an attempt to have a second child. We found out three days after Julia’s death that the embryo did not make it either. Six months later, we did another embryo transfer that succeeded, and I now have an 8-month-old daughter, Lucy Mei (“Mei Mei” means “little...

Keep Reading

I Miss Having Parents

In: Grief

Grown daughter posing between smiling parents

I have been living with the ache of loss for so long that I truly don’t remember what it feels like not to carry it. Sometimes it rests quietly beneath my ribs, dormant and almost polite. Other times it rises without warning—on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of a coffee line—and cuts straight through me. Today, it was a song. I was waiting for my coffee when “Pictures of You” by The Cure drifted through the café speakers. I hadn’t heard it in 20 years. In my twenties, it meant heartbreak—young love unraveling, relationships ending before they were...

Keep Reading

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

In: Grief

Nobody tells you that when you lose a sibling, your entire childhood flashes before your eyes. There’s no better witness to what you experienced growing up than that one person who was standing nearby for all of it. And when they’re gone, a part of that childhood and a part of that story goes with them, because it was only ever known between the two of you. There’s no last chance to say, “Remember when?” or to laugh about the things that made you laugh to tears together, a million times at the kitchen table. There’s no last conversation about...

Keep Reading

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

In: Grief

I survived losing my father after his long, grueling battle with cancer. It was one of the most difficult seasons of my life. I had a front row seat to watch cancer pick him apart piece by piece. When you lose a parent, you lose a part of yourself. They say time heals all wounds, but you never stop missing the good ones, and there are days when it feels like it just happened. By the grace of God, I survived, but I will always miss my father. Then, almost a decade later, I lost the career that helped me...

Keep Reading

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

In: Grief

During the weeks we cared for my grandmother in hospice, survival mode felt necessary. There were medications to track. Visitors to update. Logistics to manage. I remember sitting on the couch that served as my makeshift bed and listening to the rhythmic hissing and puffing of the oxygen machine one night. While my mom showered off the day, I texted my sister updates and sent my husband a quick message of love. I could still smell the lavender candle we had lit earlier in the day to mask medical scents. The house was quiet, but my mind wasn’t. I was...

Keep Reading

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

In: Grief

Woman's hands holding beautifully wrapped small gift

It has been two months and nine days since my mom passed away. The first several weeks were spent on the details and logistics of planning her service. She passed in December, so once her beautiful service had passed, I busied myself with the preparations for Christmas. By mid-February, I finally began to process some feelings of grief on a deeper level. The quiet of this less-busy season is allowing the grief to soak in a bit more. Not the big things; not the obvious, grief-heavy reminders that stop me in my tracks. Instead, I’ve been noticing the small things....

Keep Reading

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

In: Grief

It’s been 10 years since I last heard my mother’s voice. Ten years since I could pick up the phone and ask a question I already knew the answer to, just to hear her say it anyway. Ten years since someone loved me in that very specific, unconditional, occasionally annoying way that only a mother can. My mom died in 2015. And while “passed away” sounds softer, more polite, the truth is that she left. Suddenly. Permanently. With no forwarding address. She was gone. What I’ve learned in the decade since is not what I expected. I thought the biggest lesson...

Keep Reading

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

In: Grief, Marriage

The year 2025 began as a quiet storm. I was slipping into the fog of depression while navigating the early chaos of perimenopause, and some days simply getting out of bed felt impossible. My thoughts felt dark and heavy, my body unfamiliar, my energy nonexistent, and my moods uncontrollable. And yet, in the haze, there was one constant: my husband. He noticed the subtle shifts I barely acknowledged. The sighs, the quiet retreats into myself, the moments I almost broke. Instead of judgment or frustration, he offered presence. He held space for my struggle without trying to “fix” it, and...

Keep Reading

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

In: Grief

Becoming a mother has a way of bringing old wounds back to the surface, even ones you believed had healed. I never imagined grief would surface so strongly in my motherhood journey. I thought it was something you carried silently, something that faded with time. But becoming a mother felt like my loss rising to its feet and saying, I’m still here There are moments when I reach for my phone to call my mom, only to be met with the reminder that I can’t. I want to ask her if what I’m feeling is normal, if the exhaustion softens,...

Keep Reading

I Didn’t Cherish Every Moment

Kids

I Didn’t Cherish Every Moment

Defeating "The Too Busy Syndrome"

Inspiration

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Tammi Landry-Gilder

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

I Miss Having Parents

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

Get It Now

So God Made a Mother

Do You Think They Had Mothers?

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

I Miss Having Parents

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

Previous Post

Next Post

You May Also Like