Every little girls says it, “I’ll never become my mother.” And then as every girl becomes a woman, they slowly begin to realize that the inevitable has happened. A phrase slips out, they look in the mirror one day and realize they look like her, or all of a sudden start to actually understand all the things they did and said as you were growing up. (Or maybe all of the above.) 

For me, it’s my sense of humor (or lack there of according to my father and sisters – I personally think we’re pretty funny), it’s my “mommy voice,”  and it’s beginning to use some of my mother’s parenting philosophies to raise my own children. And as it becomes more and more clear to me that I’m more like my mother than the younger version of myself would be comfortable with, I realize that it’s really not such a bad thing. 

My mother is an amazingly loving, kind and patient person. And although, I have some of my father in me, too… so forget the patient part and add a whole lot of stubborn and outspoken in there, I did get her love. And maybe it’s just a mother’s love, but I now can understand how much she loved her children. I can now understand why she always told me, “There is nothing you can do to make me love you any less.” I now know why she gets so furious at anyone who has ever hurt us. And not only do I understand it, but I appreciate it and I love even more her for it. 

So, in the end, even if you don’t look in the mirror and see your mother, or you don’t find your mother’s words slipping out of your mouth, once we become mothers, we all have a little piece of our mother inside of us. If you inherit nothing else from your mom, you inherited her motherly love. And that’s pretty powerful stuff!