Dear Moms -

I just wanted to let you know that you're okay. This will get better. It will get easier. This is not the end. Things will not always be like this. This season will pass, and your life will be different than it is now.

I know that feels impossible sometimes.

I remember how that part of my life felt - like a never-ending slog of diapers and not napping and grubby hands in my hair and on my face and cutting endless meals into small bites and fat tears on fatter cheeks and reading and reading and reading the same books again and again and on and on and on...

 I remember falling into bed like a wobbly tower of Duplo blocks so early every night that my college self would've been horrified. I remember struggling to the surface of wakefulness every morning, hearing the noises from the other room that foreshadowed an epic mess in the making.

I remember the time I was on the phone with a friend on a Saturday morning around 9 a.m. and she admitted that she was laying in bed (still!) and reading a book (a grown-up book!), and at my shock, she laughed and told me that my day would come.

I remember not being able to believe her as I wiped best-left-unidentified substances off the walls.

I believe her now, as I sit on my couch with my coffee, my book, and my dog, enjoying the peacefulness of kids at school. Life is still difficult, but it's difficult in different ways. More mature and challenging ways, but ways that are different. That season passed. Life got easier.

Moms, you're okay.

They grow up. You grow up. Together, you learn how to grow up.

So to all of you -

... the moms of littles, the moms of the kids who scream always, the moms of kids who can't talk, the moms who forget to pack lunches, the moms who lock themselves in the bathroom for just one moment of peace, the moms who cry into their pillows, the moms who feel they Just Can't Do This today, the moms who want to go just five minutes without anyone touching them, the moms who suck up Legos in the vacuum after stepping on one for the last time, the moms who hate themselves for yelling at their kids, the moms who lose their cool and toss their kids shoes in the trash at playland, the moms hunched with guilt over all the things they're not doing, the moms who just can't...

I want to tell you, from a mom that totally gets it, that you are okay, and you aren't alone, and things will be better.

So hang in there because You Have Got This.