As motherhood healed my baby injury and created my perfect squad

In the recent podcast, Jen Fulviller – the author, comedian and six -year -old mother – acknowledged what stopped me in my footsteps.

“God, I love being a mom,” she said with such an unknown joy that you do not hear often enough in our culture. She continued: “I was so on my own all my life. I finally have my friends. I finally have my own community that I have never had. They are my friends and my squad and it’s so great.”

That string – part of the squad – it’s like a wave. Because I knew exactly what she meant.

Jen was always an inspiration for me. I was pregnant my first If she had sixth, so in many respects she was far on the road I just started to consider. She made it possible, and even more, she made it fun. She did not represent herself as a mother who always dreamed of a large family who grew a nanny or knitted tiny booties. She was practical, funny and honest – and joyful. It was that joy stuck with me.

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I didn’t come to motherhood, waiting for healing. In fact, I came to his fears that can be excited. My own childhood was not completely filled with stability and warmth. My mother, who raised me alone, became ill for most of his life. After a long battle with autoimmune disorder, she died when I was sixteen. My father died of suicide when I was nineteen. Just so, both of my parents are gone. And without siblings I was essentially one (although I had incredible cousins who were in violation).

If you lose so young family, you will learn how to build your own forests. I had to find out how to survive, how to make decisions, how to be an adult in the world without a security network. The loneliness of this kind of loss is not just coming with waves – it has settled. It becomes the background of your life. And for a long time I did not imagine what it would change.

Then I had children.

It did not happen immediately, but something in me began to change. Where there was a hole once, something new was growing. Heat. Rhythm. House.

In 2025, there is something almost sabotage in saying “I love being a mom.” We live at a time when motherhood is too often designed as martyrdom or misfortune.

I do not impose the burden of healing on my children; This is not their job. But true, they cured me. Just be who they are. Just letting me love them. Just letting me try.

I think about Jen’s words “I finally have my friends, my community, my squad,” and I smile because I have it too.

The point is not that I’m still not parents. I send. I set the borders. I say “no” (much). I’m not trying to become a “cool mom” and I don’t want to be the best friend of my children in how we sometimes make fun of the sits. But I bring up the people I honestly like. The people I want to be around. And most days such a feeling mutual.

We laugh together. We go for a walk. We share inside the jokes and read books aloud and explosion in the car. I have a house full of life, energy and communication. I used to be afraid of going home to an empty apartment. Now I sometimes linger in the car before you go into the loud house to just strengthen the peace, but I’m never afraid of what is inside. Because what inside is love.

Our culture talks a lot about how depleting motherhood Islands. And that’s it. There are days when the dishes do not end, and navigating never stops, and you feel that everything you did were arguments of the arbitrators and sweeping cheerios. But this is only part of the story. The second part, a part that does not go into social media almost so often, is how deep it can be. How lives. As healing.

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In 2025, there is something almost sabotage in saying “I love being a mom.” We live at a time when motherhood is too often designed as martyrdom or misfortune. You need to talk about how much you touched, how much wine you need to just survive the sleeping mode, how thoughtful mental load. And yes, it can all be real. But this is not all true.

The truth is also this: I love to be near my children. I look forward to their return home from the camp. I am counting on the end of the summer – not because I hate their camps, but because I miss them. Come in the fall, they returned home home, home training.

I really like them. And I like who I am near them.

Motherhood gave me more than a new identity. It gave me a family that I have long thought I would never have. One I didn’t know what I wanted or needed. And it gave me the opportunity to build what was not in my past: a house where love is stable and security is not hope. Providing this loving, stable home for my children I never had, also healing

It is amazing how often we are not enough. How often we whisper about the joys of raising children, as they are secrets that we should not recognize in a polite company. But I think it’s time for us to start talking aloud. Not to the sugar coating of hard things, but to honor the good. For women to know that motherhood is not only a number of casualties, it can also be a source of force. It can even be … fun.

Jenn Fulviller’s words reminded me that I was not alone, feeling that way. What for those of us who came to motherhood with some bruises and scars can be unexpected ransom. Perhaps this, like Jen, we were long lonely. And maybe we found, our children, not only in the next chapter, but also our people.

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My squad.

And they don’t just cure old wounds, they help me write a new story. The one that starts not with the loss, but with laughter.

This column was first published on Sumsitack’s Mom wars: reflections on raising children, marriage and relationships with Vifani Mandel and Kara Kennedy.

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