Winter can be hard for a mom. 

In the summer months, she often sends her kids outside, the warm sun beaming down and the windows wedged open as she listens to everyone run around the backyard. 

She cherishes the opportunity to gather everybody for walks in the springtime, bright tulips peeking through, whenever the weather is nice. 

Autumn offers respite with its crisp leaves and bearable temperatures. 

But winter? Sometimes winter is hard.

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Though beautiful, winter can feel like a ceaseless parade of dark nights.

Winter can feel like isolation. 

Winter can feel like kids cooped up inside, and mom-guilt that there’s little to do except look at a screen. 

Winter can feel like constantly being confined to the house because the conditions of the roads aren’t the best. 

Winter can feel like relentless frustration over lost mittens and hats. 

Winter can feel like chapped lips and dry, scaly skin, and discouragement that everyone in the house has a cold. 

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Winter can feel like depression and binge-eating in front of the tv.

Winter can feel like nothing but stinging wind and gray skies. 

Winter can feel unflinching. 

Of course, winter can be charming too—a time of snowman building, sledding down the steepest hills, and beautiful, ice-coated trees.

But winter is also freezing. It’s poorly lit. And can easily become a time of insurmountable loneliness. 

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So check in with your mom friends this season. Lend her an ear, extend her compassion, deliver warm cocoa to her door, whisper her name up in prayer. 

Because winter can be hard for a mom.